Posted on Tue, Apr. 11, 2006

email this

print this

reprint or license this

POULTRY FARM BILL

Kershaw County leaders frustrated

Measure takes away poultry control

By KRISTY EPPLEY RUPON

krupon@thestate.com

BRETT FLASHNICK/SPECIAL TO THE STATE

Jerry Bragg’s turkey farm in Cassatt houses up to 25,000 birds at a time in two brood houses.

More photos

Some Kershaw County leaders have their feathers ruffled over a bill passed by the Senate on Thursday that would take away counties’ rights to control where poultry farms locate.

“I think it’s an affront on home rule and the right of people in the counties to govern themselves,” county administrator Bobby Boland said.

The bill, which must be passed by the House to become law, would nullify regulations Kershaw County leaders put into place three years ago to impose tighter setback restrictions than the state’s.

Kershaw, one of the state’s top turkey producing counties, is among at least eight counties with stricter poultry farm rules than the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, according to the S.C. Coastal Conservation League.

Some counties have adopted tougher rules to keep poultry farms — and the powerful odors they produce — away from residential neighborhoods. Chicken farms also are a concern because they can pollute creeks with manure if not properly managed.

Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, would rather have the state regulate poultry farms. He voted for the bill last week.

Otherwise, he said, counties could begin imposing tighter regulations to keep the farms out of their jurisdictions.

Poultry “is an important part of a small farmer’s business in Kershaw County,” he said.

The S.C. Legislature’s plan will strip counties of their ability to regulate turkey, chicken and cattle farms.

Supporters of the bill say it still would allow counties to establish areas off-limits to agriculture through zoning.

But critics say the bill is written in a way that makes that difficult. The bill does not allow rules stronger than state law.

The House is expected to take up the bill later this month. The House traditionally has been more sympathetic to the chicken farm bill than the Senate has.

Agriculture lobbyists have been trying for at least 10 years to change state law.

Jerry Bragg, a Prestage Farms turkey farmer in Cassatt who is in favor of the statewide regulations, said 75 years ago, “everybody was in agriculture. That’s the way it had to be to live.”

But as most people have gotten away from farming, they have come to rely on a much smaller number of farmers for food.

“A lot of people aren’t mindful of that,” he said.

Mac McLeod, who raises 150,000 turkeys a year for Prestage Farms in Kershaw County, also favors statewide regulations.McLeod said when people buy land in an area zoned for agriculture they should not be surprised later when a turkey farm opens.

“We are not interested in encroaching on neighborhoods,” he said. “Farmers are the best stewards of the land that there are.”

McLeod said being able to open a turkey operation saved his family farm. Most of the county’s nearly 40 turkey farms are on 40-acre tracts.

But, he said, the county’s regulations make it difficult for farmers to open new turkey farms because the regulations mean the farm would have to be more than 100 acres.

Kershaw County Councilman Max Ford called the bill a “clear contradiction of home rule.”

He said DHEC’s role is to regulate health and environmental issues — not zoning.

“How the legislature could go along with stripping communities of the right to zone as they see fit, I can’t understand that,” Ford said.

Ford said the zoning regulations County Council passed three years ago in response to similar legislation then pending in the S.C. House of Representatives were moderate and had little impact on farmers.

County leaders — who said one turkey farm has opened in the county since the guidelines were passed three years ago — said at the time the regulations were necessary to balance property owners’ rights to enjoy their land with farmers’ rights to make a living on their property.

But under the proposed state law, Ford fears, “We would just be stuck in the future with whatever DHEC decided those regulations should be. I think that’s wrongheaded.”

Reach Rupon at (803) 771-8622.Staff writer Sammy Fretwell contributed to this story.