Legislators green-light Crescent Duck Farm request for $250,000 grant for new facility to reduce pollution, odors

A new solid waste storage facility planned at Crescent Duck Farm in Aquebogue will reduce water pollution and odors in the vicinity of the farm.

The new facility, a 65-foot-by-400-foot covered building with 6 1/2 to 7-foot tall concrete side walls and an impervious concrete floor, will prevent pollution from duck waste stored and composted on-site from impacting Meetinghouse Creek, H.F. Corwin and Son principal Doug Corwin told Suffolk County legislators yesterday. In addition the structure will help prevent odors from migrating off-site, he said.

“It’s essentially a large hoop-house,” Corwin said. It will be built between two parallel buildings on the northern portion of the site, he said.

The 145-acre duck farm raises 1 million birds each year, with about 140,000 birds in the hatchery and brooding barns at any given time. A multimillion-dollar treatment facility built by the farm a decade ago treats and dewaters the waste generated by the birds. The treated liquid effluent is discharged to artificial wetlands constructed for that purpose on the farm. The sludge and other solid wastes are currently composted and stored on the ground, a practice that allows nutrients to percolate to the groundwater table and flow into the nearby creek.

The new facility will cost an estimated $600,000 to $700,000 to build, Corwin said.

Legislators on the Environment, Planning and Agriculture Committee yesterday approved a resolution to provide $250,000 from the county’s water quality protection fund to assist the project. The resolution will now be taken up by the full legislature at its general meeting next Tuesday in Riverhead.

Founded in 1908, the Crescent Duck Farm is the last remaining duck farm on Long Island, which was once home to a thriving industry of almost 100 duck farms.

The Peconic Estuary Program and the county’s agricultural stewardship plan both support this type of project, Frank Castelli of the Suffolk County Economic Development and Planning Department told legislators. “This will clearly reduce the amount of nitrogen that gets into the Peconic Estuary,” Castelli said.

The grant to the farm will be made through the Suffolk County Soil and Water Conservation District, which will enter into an agreement with H.F. Corwin and Son.