Setback numbers may get refined

A confined feeding study committee recommended two setback classes for confined feeding operations, but four may be created.
Jay County Plan Commission also heard a report on confined feeding permit numbers at its Thursday night meeting from building and planning administrator Patti McLaughlin.
The study committee completed its recommendations in June after meetings with a variety of experts and presented its suggestions in October. Now the plan commission has begun reviewing the recommendations so it can create a confined feeding ordinance.
The plan commission unanimously voted to create a shorter setback for the smallest operations and a longer one for the biggest.
The committee recommended a 750-foot minimum setback for operations with less than 4,400 hogs, 24,000 ducks, 30,000 turkeys or 1 million chickens.
But that would mean someone who wanted a building for just three dairy cattle or five horses — low numbers, but numbers the committee recommended requiring permits for — would have to meet that setback. The study committee agreed that wasn’t what it intended.
The study committee’s minimum for larger operations was a quarter mile. Plan commission member Shane Houck also advocated for a longer setback — perhaps 2,000 feet — for the largest operations.
“I think that would solve our problems for many years to come,” Houck said, noting that the longer setback is what Randolph County has adopted.
Houck will work with the building and planning department on potential animal numbers for each setback level to present at the next plan commission meeting.
Any changes to the county’s confined feeding ordinance must go to the county commissioners for approval.
McLaughlin told the plan commission that from 2006 through this month, 103 confined feeding permits have been issued.
Of those, 53 are for operations large enough to be regulated by IDEM; 50 are not. Three permits were for operations that never started construction.
“There’s a lot of misconception. I’ve talked to a lot of people that they think every operation has to go through IDEM’s regulations and they don’t,” McLaughlin said.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management regulates operations above a certain size. Smaller operations are subject to the state chemist’s rules on manure management.
The majority — 44.5 permits — have been for swine operations. (The halves represent operations with multiple types of animals.)
The department has issued 18 permits for turkey operations, 15 1/2 for chickens and seven and a half for ducks.
Cattle, calf and veal operations have received 14 1/2 permits.
McLaughlin also gave the maximum numbers of total permitted animals: 147,970 swine; 257,500 turkeys; 173,600 ducks; 13,602,088 chickens; and 2,817 cattle, calf and veal.
“The majority of them don’t even have near that maximum number,” McLaughlin said.
Commission members Houck, Jim Zimmerman, Paula Confer, Scott HIlfiker, Mike Rockwell, Eric Pursifull and Ron Laux, absent Larry Temple and Brad Daniels, also:
•Discussed the range for notifying neighbors of a planned confined feeding operation, and decided to keep it a half-mile, which is the building and planning department’s current rule and IDEM’s regulation.
•Discussed acreage minimums for confined feeding operations. Higher minimums encourage bigger operations, Pursifull said. The study committee’s recommendation was a minimum of 10 acres for smaller confined feeding operations (CFOs) and 40 acres for larger concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). No decision on land minimums was made.
•Discussed how an ordinance might legally address road damage caused by confined feeding construction traffic. Building and planning director John Hemmelgarn said he has talked to many counties — including in other states — about the problem, and officials everywhere have told him, “When you get it figured out, let us know.”
•Received written suggestions from the building and planning department, which they will review before their next meeting.