Swarming flies disrupted a funeral service Minnie Owens attended one day at her community church near Westminster.

She thinks the nasty bugs came from a mega-chicken farm that opened down the road several years ago.

“The flies liked to eat everybody up,” the 83-year-old Owens said of the funeral. “We ought to put these farms away from people’s homes, churches and public places.

“It’s a mess, the way it is now.”

Owens could see more chicken houses in the rolling hills of Oconee County if state legislators pass an industry-backed bill that would facilitate the Georgia poultry industry’s march into Oconee and other northwest South Carolina counties.

The proposal, approved this month by the Senate, would forbid counties from adopting rules to protect neighborhoods from poultry farms.

Some Oconee officials are touting an agricultural ordinance to protect neighborhoods from the farms, saying state law isn’t adequate. The proposed legislation would keep them from doing that.

“If they pass this law, there really ain’t anything we can do,” said Oconee Councilman Tommy Crumpton.

And that’s the way it should be, supporters of the proposed law say, noting the jobs and other economic benefits poultry farming can bring.

“Some local regulations are so restrictive that their basic intent was to preclude all agricultural operations,” said Steve Collier, an executive with Fieldale Farms, which has poultry processing plants just across the state line in Georgia. “I really believe that has been the mind-set in some counties. When that happens, that is wrong.”

Georgia produces more broiler chickens than any other state. Northeast Georgia is becoming saturated with poultry farms, leaving South Carolina a prime target for expansion, agriculture experts said.

Already, the poultry industry has gained a toehold in Oconee and nearby Anderson County in the past decade.

And Bob Guild, a lawyer fighting a new chicken farm in Oconee, said Fieldale and other Georgia poultry growers are on the state’s doorstep with plans for even more farms.

“They are coming into Oconee County because they’ve burned up all the available sites” in Georgia, said Guild, a Sierra Club member from Columbia. “There’s a big move afoot.”

FIGHTING A FARM

If not properly managed, poultry farms can produce powerful odors and send manure-polluted runoff into creeks. Tens of thousands of birds live on the farms, clustered in barns, where they produce tons of waste.

Frances Medlin fears her community will be ruined by expansion of the Georgia poultry industry.

From the broad porch of her frame home, she can breathe sweet, mountain-cooled air most every day as she looks at the distant southern Appalachians.

But she also can see a vacant field where a mega-chicken farm is planned.

The state has approved a permit to open the farm, which would house about 120,000 chickens at any one time. A major Georgia poultry company would supply chickens to the farmer.

Guild is representing Medlin and her community in fighting the farm.

Medlin and her neighbors worry the fetid odor of poultry manure and dead chickens will drift the short distance to their homes. By their count, more than 100 homes and three churches are within a mile of the proposed farm.

“We are not going to have fresh air if that farm goes in,” she said.

THE KEY: PROXIMITY

Agricultural lobbyists say environmental problems with poultry farms aren’t widespread, but South Carolina has had its share of pollution concerns.

In the past five years, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control has received more than 400 poultry farm complaints, mostly about odor and manure, said Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter.

Counties should have the right to protect neighborhoods from chicken farms, he said.

While some say looser regulation would entice poultry companies into South Carolina, those aren’t the only reasons agribusinesses might focus on Oconee.

Several slaughterhouses and feed mills aren’t far from the S.C. border, making it easy for Georgia corporations to contract with Oconee farmers.

Gainesville, Ga., for instance, is less than 50 miles from the S.C. border. It has three chicken-processing plants.

Fieldale Farms, one of Georgia’s major poultry companies, also has processing plants in two other nearby Georgia cities: Cornelia and Murrayville.

“We are close to the processors and the feed mills,” Clemson University extension agent Howard Hiller said of northwest South Carolina. “That’s what they base their placement of poultry houses on.”

In the past decade, Fieldale has contracted with 120 S.C. farms to supply broiler chickens. The company has more than 400 contract farms in Georgia, Collier said.

Such arrangements have helped make poultry South Carolina’s top cash crop during the past decade. But that pales when compared to Georgia.

The Peach State is first nationally in broiler chicken production, growing more than 1 billion chickens for the dinner table annually. South Carolina ranks 12th, at 204 million chickens produced, according to federal agricultural statistics.

TOUGHEST RULES

Under existing state animal farm rules, a poultry corporation can build chicken barns as close as 200 feet to another person’s property and within 1,000 feet of a home. Barns typically house 25,000 to 30,000 birds.

Some county rules require greater setback distances.

South Carolina’s regulations are among the toughest in the region, Collier said.

The Farm Bureau and the S.C. Poultry Federation have pushed the bill approved last week by the S.C. Senate for more than a decade, arguing farmers are unduly regulated by county ordinances.

Minnie Owens disagrees. She believes Oconee needs wider distances between chicken farms and people’s homes or churches. Like others, she questions whether the county can handle any more mega-chicken farms without tighter restrictions.

Tougher rules might have kept the flies away from the funeral she attended several years ago — and from the Five Forks community where she grew up.

“We can’t have the doors open in warm weather at the church,” she says. “It has just about ruined us.”

Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537.