Efforts are being made to help protect area rivers, lakes, and streams from pollution that originates at chicken farms.

Grants were secured to build storage facilities for chicken waste, four in Lauderdale County, two in Kemper County.

When the waste is fresh it contains high levels of nitrogen and other substances. When rain falls, the water carries the waste into bodies of water.

"We're located in an impaired water shed. Anything that we can do to reduce those impairments, such as this particular structure we have here, makes us better stewards of the environment," said Kelvin Jackson of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. "By being better stewards of the environment, we're better stewards on the resources God has given us."

These new storage facilities will allow chicken farm owners to store the feces to later use as fertilizer, while preventing it from running into area waterways.

So who is impacted by this?

"Everybody in our water shed, that's 915 square miles, that's over half a million acres of this Chunky-Okatibbee Water Shed," said Tommy Vincent of the East Mississippi Land Trust. "Any time you have runoff, it's going to run into a water body. Ad the Chunky River which is close to here is the actual head waters of the Pascagoula River Basin which runs into the Gulf of Mexico. Everything we do up here impacts everything all the way to the Gulf Coast."