New regulations are recommended

 Editor's note: To view the full document that includes the confined feeding study commission's regulations, click: http://ow.ly/OcIHp

Jay County’s confined feeding study commission turned over its recommendations for ordinance changes to Jay County Plan Commission. But those ideas were not presented to the public.
While plan commission members asked some question about details of the recommendations at their meeting Thursday, they decided to wait to present and discuss them publicly after they have more time to review them. Part of the recommendation packet was not complete until Thursday.
The recommendations include new definitions of feeding operations, expanded setbacks, permit fees and notification rules.
Instead of presenting the recommendations, Purdue extension educator Larry Temple, who serves on both the plan commission and study commission, explained the process by which the recommendations were reached.
That included a series of public meetings to hear concerns and expert presentations, as well as sub-committee meetings on specific confined feeding issues. The study commission was formed in September and tasked with studying confined feeding issues.
Plan commission member Mike Rockwell asked if the study commission was going to present the recommendations to the public. Temple said that decision was up to the plan commission, which then informally decided it needed time to review the recommendations before discussing them publicly.
Several in attendance asked if the document that includes the recommendations would be available to the public, with the commission saying copies could likely be picked up at the building and planning office early next week. The Commercial Review was given a copy of the document at the conclusion of the meeting, and it was made available on the newspaper’s website — http://www.thecr.com — Thursday evening.
Plan commission president Jim Zimmerman thanked the study commission for its work.
“They spent considerable effort in putting these recommendations together,” he said. “It’s not something that was an easy job.
“Several of them have told me that they have a better understanding of animal agriculture now that they did before they started.”

Definitions
The recommendations include new definitions for “intensive livestock operations” that would fall under the regulations and require a permit from the county’s building and planning department based on the number of animals per acre. The rules would apply to both operation owners and livestock owners

Those thresholds are: three beef or dairy cattle, five horses, six sows, six heifers, 10 finishing hogs, 10 veal calves, 20 sheep or goats, 25 nursery pigs, 250 ducks, geese or laying hens, 400 pullets and 500 broilers.
Operations that exceed 200 cattle, 400 hogs or 20,000 poultry would fall under the guidelines regardless of acreage.
The current numbers under the county ordinances are 200 cattle or horses, 400 swine or sheep and 5,000 or 5,700 fowl or ducks, depending whether the manure is stored dry or wet.
Some commission members expressed concerns about the impact such thresholds could have on 4H members.

Operation setbacks
Included in the recommendations are new setback rules, with variances allowed if odor mitigation, “shelter belts,” bio-filtration or covered manure storage is used. Those set backs would be:
•750 feet from residences for operations with less than 4,400 hogs, 24,000 ducks, 30,000 turkeys or 1 million chickens, with at least half of that distance to be on the operators property.
•One-quarter mile (1,320 feet) for operations with more than the above numbers.
There would also be setbacks of 2 miles from Portland and 1 mile from each of the other municipalities in the county.
The current ordinance includes setbacks of 750 feet from any residence not owned by the operator, 1,250 feet from any church, school, business, public building or area zoned commercial, 1,550 feet from any area zoned rural residential, 100 feet from any road or highway right-of-way and 100 feet from any property line. There are also setbacks of 2 miles from Portland, 1 mile each from Pennville and Redkey and a half-mile from Salamonia.

Manure application
The recommendations would require any operation planning application of manure to register with the plan commission. If requested, manure application records would have to be presented to the building and planning department director, a position currently held by John Hemmelgarn.
Also included are suggested manure application setbacks from residences, wells, public buildings, churches, roads, highways, ditches, streams, drainage inlets or a “buildup of five or more homes”. Those range from 50 to 300 feet if the manure is injected, 50 to 600 feet if incorporated and 50 to 1,000 feet if applied to the surface.
The smallest setbacks are for roads and highways, while the largest are for groups of homes, public buildings and churches.
Operations planning to build manure storage structures at a different site would need to apply for a county permit and notify residents within a half-mile as required by Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

Notification and oversight
The new building permit application process would add notification of the county health department and the soil and water conservation district and expand the notification radius for neighbors to 1 mile.
The current ordinance requires notification of the county engineer and surveyor and allows them two weeks to report an concerns with the operator’s plan. It also requires notification of neighbors within a half-mile radius, a legal notice in the local newspaper and 30-day public comment period, following which those comments are to be reviewed by the county highway department, county surveyor and zoning administration.
The suggested new rules would then give the county three days to issue a permit if the operator is in compliance with all laws and regulations. They also call for a permit that does not fall under IDEM parameters to be valid for two years instead of the current one, and for the addition of a renewal process that could extend the permit for two years as long as no changes were made from the original request.
All operations that fall under regulation by IDEM, of which the county currently has 93 with several more under construction, get permits that are valid for four years.
Any operation making a substantial increase — 20 percent or more — in animals would also require a “public hearing and notice.”

Miscellaneous
The recommendations also call for permit fees of up to $350 for projects with one building at a cost of less than $1,000,000, $1,000 for three buildings at a cost of between $1 million and $5 million and $3,500 three buildings or more at a cost of $5 million or more.
Also proposed is a rule that would require IDEM-regulated operations to be on sites of at least 40 acres, and non-IDEM regulated operations to be on sites of at least 10 acres.
Other recommendations include a representative from the planning commission to serve on the soil and water conservation district board, requiring a “shelter belt” of earthen berms, shrubs and trees, and a spreadsheet that confined feeding operators could use during the site selection process.
They also suggest:
•Creating an information packet for permit applicants that would include best management practices, contacts with local United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency personnel, the 2012 Purdue University manure/nutrient application guidelines and the Indiana form on marketing and distribution of manure.
•An annual review of the Jay County Water Table through Indiana Department of Natural Resources, to be reported to the county commissioners.

Enforcement
Hemmelgarn expressed concerns about enforcement, asking if he would be in charge of monitoring operations for compliance with the new rules. Though at the meeting Temple said that decision would be up to the plan commission, the issue is addressed twice in the recommendations.
They first say complaints “will be investigated by the Jay Building and Planning Department. If found in violation of guidelines, face fines up to and including revocation of permit.”
Later, the document states: “Complaints should be directed to the office of building and planning. Complaints may be investigated by the building and planning director or referred to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management or the state chemist’s office as appropriate.”
Zimmerman noted that the current process involves complaints being reported to the building and planning office and then brought before the plan commission to decide whether to pursue legal action. He said he expected and new rules would require the same steps.

Zimmerman emphasized that the document presented to the plan commission Thursday is a list of recommendations. The plan commission will review it, and ultimately the decision on county ordinance changes is in the hands of Jay County Commissioners.
Jane Ann Runyon, a study commission member, noted that there was a lot of discussion involved in the process.
“We had things we couldn’t totally agree on,” she said.
“And that’s the way that process is going to be here,” added Zimmerman. “There’s going to be disagreement. There’s going to be discussion. There’s going to be compromise.”
Plan commission will discuss the recommendations at its next meeting, which has not yet been scheduled.
In other business, plan commission members Jim Zimmerman, Eric Pursiful, Scott Hilfiker, Mike Rockwell, Shane Houck and Larry Temple, absent Steve Ritchie, Brad Daniels and Paula Confer also voted to retain its officers for another year with Zimmerman as president, Hilfiker vice president and Confer secretary. It appointed Pati McLaughlin as recording secretary, named Temple and Hilfiker as representatives to Portland Plan Commission and Jay County Board of Zoning Appeals respectively and retained Bill Hinkle as legal council.