Wonder Lake residents line up to stop small slaughterhouse operation

About 30 residents met with Kelly Liebmann a few days ago, picking up some of the 100 yard signs she’s had printed to protest a proposed chicken-slaughtering facility off Greenwood Road near Wonder Lake.

Liebmann serves as administrator of the Facebook group Protect Wonder Lake-No Slaughterhouse under a different name. Created April 23, the group had 237 members as of May 9. A change.org petition has 515 signers.

Liebmann is a Greenwood Township trustee but noted that she was speaking on her own and not for the township.

The neighbors are taking a stance against a slaughtering facility proposed on the 107-acre Sunberry Farm property at 3712 Greenwood Road. The proposed slaughterhouse, which could be allowed with a special-use permit on agricultural-zoned land, is adjacent to Wonder Lake homes but has a Woodstock address. Some homes are 800 feet from the proposed structure.

“I am concerned about the possible contamination of Nippersink Creek,” as well as Wonder Lake and the Glacial Park Conservation Area, Liebmann said of her opposition to the slaughterhouse.

Information on “how he will mitigate contamination for the groundwater” has not been included in the documents found online for McHenry County‘s May 22 Zoning Board of Appeals hearing.

Sunberry Farm has been working with the McHenry County Department of Health on its septic and waste planning, said Patrician Nomm, director of environmental health at the county agency. Her office works with businesses with septic systems to ensure “systems function optimally.”

Any waste created from the slaughtering of animals goes into a special tank, fitted with an alarm to notify when it is filled. That tank is pumped out by a company – also regulated – that takes it to an appropriate facility for processing, Nomm said.

“It is being picked up by a licensed hauler to take it to the right place,” Nomm said, adding that the site would be tested every other year for runoff, but that “none of that waste is going into the ground.”

Sergiy Bazylyuk is a co-owner of Sunberry Farm and is listed as the special-use permit applicant. The family-operated farm has two locations in the area – one where they are seeking the slaughterhouse and one at 2318 Greenwood Road.

“We are farming over 300 acres on four different farms” in Lake and McHenry counties, Bazylyuk said. Although they are “very diversified,” he said, their main crops are fruit trees and vegetables. Their poultry – chicken and turkeys – are pasture-raised on a farm near Harvard and would be taken to the Wonder Lake location for processing.

Bazylyuk is asking McHenry County to approve a 50-by-100-foot building with a 20-by-30-foot killing floor. He envisions butchering about 2,000 birds a year at the site to sell at their farm stand locations, or to customers who would order fresh chickens through their website.

“Even if we double production, it would be 4,000 a year,” Bazylyuk said. The birds will be processed for sale with an air-chilled system, rather than a traditional water and chlorine system, he added.

Nomm said the slaughterhouse is expected to use 1,200 gallons of water a day. In comparison, a four-bedroom house typically uses 800 gallons a day.

“The numbers are not out of whack” for what the Bazylyuks are proposing, she said. “It is pretty straightforward.”

The slaughterhouse is being built to U.S. Department of Agriculture standards and will be inspected. While slaughtering other animals, including the beef and pork they raise, is not currently in the plans, it could be in the future, Bazylyuk said.

“Since it is so expensive [to be USDA certified], we would like to get permission for everything,” he said.

If the operation were to expand to pigs, it would be 100 to 200 animals a year, he said, adding that Sunberry Farms would not slaughter for other farm producers.

Sunberry Farm started offering fresh poultry to customers at its farm stands after customers started requesting it, Bazylyuk said. They had been taking birds to a Wisconsin slaughterhouse, “but they are closed from December to May. That is too long of a gap without providing fresh meat to customers,” he said.

Liebmann‘s group asked the Wonder Lake Village Board to weigh in on the slaughterhouse proposal. A letter posted on the village’s website and Facebook page notes the site is adjacent to the Woods Creek and Deer Path subdivisions.

The letter from Village President Dan Dycus highlights the village’s concerns regarding potential sound and smell pollution, and the potential for groundwater contamination.

“I have to play Switzerland,” Dycus said.

While it’s appropriate for the village to weigh in and address residents’ concerns, “it is a farmer who is trying to do a small slaughterhouse, to do this legally and in the confines of county regulation,” Dycus said.