Don’t want a chicken farm near your house? Opposing it may get harder

Agricultural interests are pushing a bill that makes it harder for people to prevent foul-smelling chicken farms from locating in South Carolina communities.

A bill, supported by the S.C. Farm Bureau, says neighbors wanting to stop a chicken or turkey farm must pay $5,000 for the right to file an environmental appeal. Current fees to appeal range from $100 to $500, said environmental lawyers who handle poultry farm cases.

If approved by the Legislature, the plan also would prevent state regulators from imposing stringent setback rules that keep chicken or turkey farms away from people’s homes and property. And rules requiring a buffer of trees and shrubs between poultry farms and neighboring homes would be eased.

The S.C. Farm Bureau, which spends more money lobbying legislators than most other groups, sent out a legislative alert this week supporting the bill (H.3929). The bill was introduced this month by about a dozen House members, including agriculture committee chairman Davey Hiott, R-Pickens.

Farm Bureau president Harry Ott said poultry growers want to follow state environmental rules, but are concerned about “frivolous’’ appeals of permits they need to operate.

“We just want to make sure it’s fair – that once we have abided by the rules and done everything we are supposed to do, a third party doesn’t come in for a couple of hundred dollars and stop us,’’ Ott said Thursday.

The S.C. Environmental Law Project and a Laurens County citizens group blasted the legislation. The nonprofit law project said the increased fees to appeal chicken house permits would make it easier for poultry farms to open – even when people don’t want them.

“The fee portion of this bill is a flagrant attempt to stop citizens – especially rural citizens in the areas where these operations are located – from opposing poultry houses under any circumstances,’’ law project attorney Michael Corley said in a news release Thursday. “This move to price rural citizens out of exercising their rights is something I’ve never before seen, and certainly not to this startling extreme.’’

Residents of the Mountville community in Laurens County, for instance, are appealing five chicken farm permits. But if the proposed law already was in place, the appeals would cost them $25,000, Corley said. That could have the effect of limiting the appeals, he said.

Mountville residents are upset because they say some 50 chicken houses have opened within five miles of the community’s center and state regulators recently approved 30 more. Odor complaints are among the biggest flashpoints between communities and poultry farms. Corley said Laurens County residents also have complained that dried manure has blown into roads and onto their property from poultry farms.

South Carolina’s poultry industry is one of the state’s largest, bringing in more than $12 billion annually, and its boosters have strong support in the Legislature. In 2006, the Farm Bureau and other agricultural interests persuaded the Legislature to ban counties from imposing stringent local poultry regulations. The current bill would need to be approved by the House, then sent to the Senate. Gov. Henry McMaster would have to sign the bill for it to become law.

The Legislative session ends in May, but the bill, if not approved, could be voted on in 2018.

While residents of Laurens County ripped the Legislation, they are not the first to complain about the proliferation of poultry farms in South Carolina. Chicken houses dot South Carolina’s landscape from the Pee Dee through Lexington and Saluda counties, and into the Upstate.

Many chicken farms are overseen by national poultry corporations that contract with local farmers to grow chickens or turkeys for a price. Poultry boosters say the system makes chicken and turkey meat affordable at the grocery store, but critics say the farms can pollute water with chicken manure and foul the air with powerful odors.

Last year, the S.C. Farm Bureau Federation spent about $150,000 lobbying the Legislature, while the Poultry Federation spent about $140,000, according to the state Ethics Commission.

Legislators sponsoring the bill include Reps. Mac Toole, R-Lexington, Mike Pitts, R-Laurens and Bill Sandifer, R-Oconee. The Farm Bureau, the Palmetto Agribusiness Council and the S.C. Poultry Federation plan to testify before a House committee on the bill.

Charles Blackmon, a spokesman for South Carolinians for Responsible Agricultural Practices, said existing state law isn’t strong enough to control poultry farms, as it is now written. So the state doesn’t need to take away the limited protections it now has, he said.

Reach Fretwell at 803 771 8537

This story was originally published March 23, 2017 at 4:08 PM with the headline "Don’t want a chicken farm near your house? Opposing it may get harder."