Residents Urge Accomack Supervisors to Reject Deep-Well Poultry Waste Injection Proposal

EXMORE, Va. — A 19-page research report delivered to the Accomack County Board of Supervisors warns that a proposal to pump 150,000 tons of poultry litter and other waste deep beneath the Eastern Shore each year poses unacceptable risks to the region’s sole-source aquifer.

The letter, authored by Exmore resident and longtime environmental advocate Kenneth Dufty, urges county officials to reject a zoning change that would allow Vaulted Deep—a California-based waste-injection startup—to construct a deep-well injection facility on a five-acre site in Accomack County.

The company presented its plan during the Eastern Shore of Virginia Groundwater Committee meeting in October. The operation would inject a slurry made from poultry litter—and potentially human biosolids—into deep sedimentary layers under pressures approaching 5,000 pounds per square inch, according to Dufty’s report.

Core Concern: Risk to the Eastern Shore’s Only Source of Drinking Water

In the report addressed to Board Chairman H. Jackie Phillips, Dufty argues that Vaulted Deep’s claims of “ideal” geological conditions beneath Accomack County are not supported by federal hydrogeological studies.

Dufty cites the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2020 Hydrogeological Framework of the Eastern Shore, which shows that the confining layers beneath the aquifer system are composed largely of sediments—sand, shells, and clay—not the “thick confining rock layers” the developer described.

If groundwater can move naturally through those layers, the report argues, then waste injected at high pressure may also migrate upward over time, potentially contaminating the drinking-water supply on which all residents and businesses depend.

“It is not conjecture that there are no guarantees that our drinking water…will not be compromised,” Dufty writes. “Putting that resource at risk—no matter how small—is a gamble that should be avoided at all costs.”

Vaulted Deep’s Rapid Expansion and National Model

Vaulted Deep is a spin-off of Advantek Waste Management Services in Los Angeles, where the company injects biosolids into a disposal zone separated from the city’s drinking water by two impermeable rock formations.

The company also recently purchased a Kansas waste-injection facility located above subterranean salt caverns—geologic formations that researchers say do not exist beneath the Eastern Shore.

If approved, the Accomack project would become the company’s largest operation, injecting more waste annually than its California and Kansas sites combined.

Vaulted Deep’s efforts are supported by private carbon-removal funding sources, including the Frontier Coalition, backed by companies such as Spotify, Stripe, and Alphabet. Dufty’s report estimates that the company could earn more than $170 million over several years if the Eastern Shore project moves forward.

Questioning Public Need

The report challenges the necessity of disposing of poultry litter underground at all. According to the research team, chicken manure is already a high-demand agricultural fertilizer and can be pelletized and sold on commercial platforms for up to $1 per pound.

“There is no public need to treat it as hazardous waste to be disposed of deep under the ground,” Dufty writes, arguing that the material has “a much higher and better purpose” under the Frontier Coalition’s own criteria for project funding.

While acknowledging that the poultry industry produces more manure than current markets can easily absorb, the report suggests that alternatives—such as expanding pelletization capacity—should be explored. Dufty notes that lack of natural gas infrastructure on the Shore makes large-scale pellet production costly, and calls on county officials to pursue pipeline expansion to support environmentally safer solutions.

A Call for Precaution

In closing, Dufty urges Accomack supervisors to reject the zoning change required for Vaulted Deep’s proposal to advance and warns against allowing the Eastern Shore to serve as “the host for an experiment” using a poorly understood geological system formed by a 35-million-year-old meteor strike.

“We support [Vaulted Deep’s] mission” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Dufty writes, “but there is not enough information on our complex and sole-source groundwater regime” to safely allow waste injection beneath the aquifer. He encourages officials and residents to work toward more sustainable and less risky solutions to the poultry industry’s waste challenges.

Copies of the report were also sent to the ESVA Groundwater Committee, the Northampton Board of Supervisors, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality.

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Wayne Creed

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