COLUMBIA - State lawmakers are considering a bill that would limit local governments' ability to regulate large poultry operations.

The bill, which has passed the Senate, would block an ordinance being considered by Oconee County officials to protect residential neighborhoods from having major chicken houses move in next door.

Steve Collier, an executive with Fieldale Farms, has poultry processing plants just across the state line in Georgia.

"Some local regulations are so restrictive that their basic intent was to preclude all agricultural operations," Collier said. "I really believe that has been the mind-set in some counties. When that happens, that is wrong."

Attorney Bob Guild said the major chicken operations in Georgia, which produces more broiler chickens that any other state, are running out of places to expand there, and want to move into the northwest corner of South Carolina.

"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."

Large poultry operations house thousands of birds in barns. If not properly managed, the farms can create strong odors and send manure-polluted runoff into creeks.

Frances Medlin lives in Oconee County and worries that her community will be ruined by the industry's expansion. From her porch she can see the Appalachians and a vacant field where a large chicken farm is planned. It has state approval and would house more than 100,000 chickens at a time.

Guild is representing Medlin and her community in fighting the farm. "We are not going to have fresh air if that farm goes in," she said.

In the past five years the South Carolina 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.

Leventis said he thinks counties should have the right to protect neighborhoods from chicken farms.