Eastern Shore Chicken Waste Facility Continues Pollution, Despite Years of Fines and Court Battles

Darling Ingredients in Dorchester County is Still Violating Its Discharge Permit and Polluting the Nearby Transquaking River

A controversial chicken rendering plant in Dorchester County, Maryland has racked up dozens of pollution violations in recent years, including approximately 30 new violations since 2024, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).

A recent Notice of Violation issued by MDE found that Darling Ingredients, formerly Valley Proteins, committed significant pollution to the Transquaking River between January 2024 and December 2025. This included excess discharges of nitrogen, phosphorus, E. coli bacteria, and other pollution. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ECHO database also shows continued permit exceedances during the first few months of 2026.

“The amount of pollution and permit violations here is staggering. Darling Ingredients continues to be a bad actor in the local community, with dire consequences for the Transquaking River,” said Alan Girard, CBF’s Maryland Director of Advocacy. “The harmful, well-documented levels of pollution that Darling Ingredients releases into the river and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay are simply unacceptable.”

Darling Ingredients receives chicken and animal processing byproducts, like feathers and bones, and turns them into fertilizer, animal feed, and other products. These latest compliance failures add to the Linkwood facility’s long history of polluting the Transquaking River, Higgins Mill Pond, and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.

“Darling Ingredients has become a textbook example of what happens when chronic pollution is allowed to persist for years without meaningful accountability,” said Matt Pluta, Director of Riverkeeper Programs at ShoreRivers. “These recent violations are not isolated incidents. They are the latest chapter in a long history of pollution, enforcement actions, repeated public concern, and missed opportunities to protect one of the Eastern Shore’s important waterways. The continued violations raise serious concerns about whether this facility can operate without threatening the health of the Transquaking River and the communities that depend on it.”

Darling Ingredients’ most recent violations follow a slew of non-compliance and multiple court orders, including:

• A $540,000 settlement with MDE in 2022, after the facility repeatedly discharged pollutants into local waters. This penalty was included in a legally-binding consent decree that was issued after environmental partners — including Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), and ShoreRivers and Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth (DCPG), represented by Chesapeake Legal Alliance — joined MDE’s lawsuit.
• A 2024 court order that requires MDE to revise Darling Ingredient’s wastewater discharge permit to meet state and federal law. Environmental partners — including CBF, ShoreRivers, DCPG, Friends of the Nanticoke River, and Wicomico Environmental Trust — filed the challenge against MDE for issuing a permit that allowed Darling Ingredients to expand its average discharge from 150,000 gallons per day to up to 575,000 gallons per day without meaningfully reducing pollution levels in the discharge.
• Over 50 consent decree violations cited by MDE between August 2023 and March 2024, resulting in demand of a $15,000 fine. The Notice claimed Darling Ingredients failed to leave at least two feet of empty capacity in its wastewater lagoons. The empty space, called freeboard, is needed to prevent overflows and spills during heavy rains or other conditions that could cause pollution to be washed into rivers and streams.

In the most recent Notice of Violation, MDE found that Darling Ingredients exceeded its pollution limitations in its wastewater discharge permit, conducted unauthorized bypasses of its treatment system, failed to meet monitoring and reporting standards, and failed to adequately control stormwater and sediment.

While Darling Ingredients disputes parts of MDE’s Notice, suggesting some violations are from recent upgrades made to their wastewater treatment plant, the consistently wide range of pollution and non-compliance identified by MDE is alarming.

“We have worked for twelve years to bring attention to the blatant pollution of the Transquaking River emanating from the Darling Ingredients industrial rendering plant at Linkwood,” said Fred C. Pomeroy, President of DCPG Board of Directors. “In the process, we’ve hosted several informational meetings where local citizens shared their concerns about environmental damage and threats to public health. We’ve participated in multiple legal actions and exhausted our treasury by funding ten years of water sampling. During all this time, the industry has worked to ‘greenwash’ itself in its public statements while continuing to abuse the river and the citizens of the Eastern Shore.”

Environmental partners continue to closely monitor MDE and the Darling Ingredients facility to ensure it remains in compliance with the law to prevent further harm to Maryland waterways and communities.