FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wicomico Environmental Trust, Friends of the Nanticoke River, and County Residents File Suit Over DAF Storage Tank 

Wicomico County, MD – October 22, 2025 – The Wicomico Environmental Trust (WET), The Friends of the Nanticoke River, and more than two dozen County residents have filed a complaint in Wicomico County Circuit Court seeking relief from the harms and risks caused by the open-top Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) waste storage tank on Porter Mill Road. 

For five long years, neighbors of the huge tank have endured its horrific, pervasive stench depriving them of the use and enjoyment of their properties. Residents have also faced dangerous and disruptive tanker traffic, noise pollution, and other serious impacts, as captured in WET’s award-winning 2021 documentary, Gut Soup. 
Beyond the odor and disruption, the tank poses significant risks to drinking water safety throughout Wicomico County and imperils water quality for the many who depend on nearby surface waters, including the Chesapeake Bay, for livelihood, food, or recreation. 

Environmental risks from the tank have already become a reality. A disastrous spill of DAF waste from the tank has contaminated nearby wetlands, underscoring the danger residents have warned about for years. By then, the Wicomico County Council had already recognized the “adverse effects” of open-top storage of this material and passed bipartisan legislation to prohibit the building of such tanks anywhere in the County. Still, this tank remains in operation. 

“The fact is that the tank should never have been built here. It is a large-scale commercial and industrial waste storage operation that was inaccurately represented as an agricultural operation to obtain zoning and building permits," says Lynette Kenney, spokesperson for the Neighborhood Action Group. 

The Wicomico County Zoning Code clearly prohibits this tank. Plaintiffs have tried time and again—before, during, and since construction, as recently as 3 months ago—to persuade the County Administration to address this situation by revoking the improperly obtained and unauthorized grant of permits for the tank, as required by the Code. 

Today, we say enough. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE WET's website