County asked to delay action (07/17/06)

Jay County Commissioners were urged to hold their fire this morning on proposed changes in local regulations on confined animal feeding operations.

“This thing needs to make sense to all parties,” Jay County Farm Bureau president Dave Lowe said this morning.

Lowe said the Indiana Farm Bureau, the Indiana Department of Agriculture, and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management are scurrying to develop new regulations in the face of the rapid growth of confined feeding operations (CFOs) in Jay and Randolph counties.

That surge in CFO development has led to complaints from neighboring homeowners, and local officials have been struggling for months to develop new regulations on the local level.

The Jay County Planning Commission agreed on a split vote last week to recommend that the county make changes in set-back and notification requirements and permitting.

Those recommendations have not yet been forwarded to the Jay County Commissioners; when the recommendations are received, the commissioners will schedule another public hearing on the matter.

Lowe said this morning that changes in set-backs and notification rules are acceptable to most farmers, but that they want to avoid yet another layer of paperwork.

The planning commission is recommending that residential set-backs be increased to 750 feet and that property owners within a half a mile of a proposed confined feeding operation be notified before construction.

“We feel notification at a half mile is not a problem as long as it’s reciprocal,” said Lowe. But we don’t need to have two sets of permits. ... If we have dual and triple permitting issues, production agriculture is going to be stifled.”

Confined feeding operations are permitted through IDEM and monitored by the state chemist’s office.

County health officer Dr. Stephen Myron told commissioners that IDEM’s primary focus is on water pollution.

“Currently there are no answers on (odor or air pollution) issues,” said Myron. “The state is going to have to get more involved.”

“There is an odor,” Lowe acknowledged earlier. “But that’s part of living in the country.”

“Residents are getting overwhelmed by big operations,” said commissioner Milo Miller Jr. “What they don’t want is odor every day.”

Myron indicated he’s unclear on IDEM inspection guidelines for confined feeding operations and would research the matter for the commissioners.

Lowe indicated it could be 60 days or more before new state regulations can be drafted but urged commissioners to wait before instituting local rule changes.

In 2005 a committee of health officials, farmers, and educators made a number of recommendations for changes in local regulations. But the commissioners took no action on the proposals at that time, citing the state’s plan to add more control to such operations.

The latest review of the issue has occupied the commissioners and the planning commission since April.[[In-content Ad]]