A Carroll County farmer has been charged with polluting a stream with the animal waste of his now shuttered slaughterhouse operation.
Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. announced Friday that Carroll L. Schisler Sr., 60, of 2546 Marston Road, New Windsor, has been charged in Carroll County Circuit Court with allegedly illegally discharging a pollutant into state waters and with illegally allowing the disposal of solid waste on his farm.
Water pollution resulted from dead and decomposing animals and wastewater, the attorney general said. Schisler allowed the disposal of litter consisting of dead animals, discarded vehicles and 5-gallon buckets in amounts exceeding 500 pounds, the attorney general said.
Roland Walker, Schisler?s attorney, said that when investigations began at the farm, his client hired an engineering firm to test the water and results were favorable.
“It may have been on some other occasion that it was not fine, but I?m sure it?s fine now,” Walker said.
Walker said Schisler buys malnourished animals for cheap at auctions, nurses them back to life and then sells them.
Sometimes, however, these animals, both pigs and goats, die before regaining their health and Schisler is unable to immediately take “the dead animals to a dump the same day, or the next day.”
“The state will claim that he was derelict in getting [the animals] out of there, but we will fight back as to all these [charges].”
This spring, federal investigators found pigs on the Schisler farm with trichinosis, a parasitic disease. Runofffrom the farm?s slaughter areas, which flowed into nearby streams, tested positive for listeria, E. coli and fecal coliform bacteria, according to court documents.
If convicted of water pollution, Schisler could be sentenced to up to one year in prison and fined $25,000 for each offense.
Littering in an amount exceeding 500 pounds carries a sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine of $30,000.
Schisler, and his son, Carroll Schisler Jr., 34, face criminal charges related to animal cruelty, selling unsanitary meat and operating a slaughterhouse without a license.
Examiner staff writer Sara Michael contributed to this story.
