Residents of the Santo Tirso urbanization, in Villanueva del Carnero (Santovenia de la Valdoncina, León) have presented allegations against the expansion of a poultry farm and have expressed their discomfort before the City Council and the Territorial Environment Service of León. “We are convinced that the Board would favor an irresponsible policy of expansion of industrial livestock if it allowed the expansion of the farm against the well-being of the neighbors and the environment,” they point out in a statement.
They add that they fear that the water from the well that supplies the urbanization will be contaminated due to leaks from the farm or that, due to the increase in the collection of groundwater from a larger farm, they will run out of supply.
The Santovenia de la Valdoncina City Council does not install a sanitation system in this area, they lament, “which increases the risk of contamination of the soil and aquifers that can affect much more remote populations such as Ribaseca, Onzonilla, Viloria de la Jurisdicción or Antimio de Abajo».
They argue that the overcrowding of animals “is a time bomb for the appearance of new diseases that can seriously affect the local fauna or mutate and affect human beings, such as the recent avian flu or the current pandemic” and clarify that the risk it multiplies exponentially the greater the exploitation. “We don’t even want to imagine what a total of 124,000 chickens will mean,” they say.
They say that on some occasions the extractors do not completely filter the air that they expel from the breeding buildings and you can see traces of down from the chickens deposited on the surfaces of everything that remains outside. “This is not only uncomfortable but also dangerous to health, since breathing these particles can cause lung problems, especially in people with allergies and/or respiratory problems,” they say.
In addition, they consider that the plant wall that the company is obliged to maintain is very deficient and it can be seen that the plants that are close to the extractors are unable to survive the conditions of the extracted air.
«This exploitation does not comply with the regulations, since it limits to a distance of about 80 meters with inhabited houses, when the minimum distance for this type of exploitation must be 100 meters. According to the project of the poultry farm in its application, the construction closest to the houses is going to be used as a manure warehouse, with all the harmful consequences that this can have for us,” they argue.
