Grant County CAFO Rules Committee Focuses on Setbacks
The committee working to make recommendations to Grant County area plan Commission on changes in the zoning code to deal with CAFOs is focused on setbacks, and while some have settled on a restrictive 2 mile setback from residences, others on the committee far that the result would be too restrictive:
By law, officials cannot put in place an ordinance that would prevent animal feeding operations from locating in Grant County, said Tanya Ford, former executive director of the Area Plan Commission. Ford has taken a job at Taylor University, but she is staying on to advise the committee until its work is complete.
When [Grant County councilman Myron] Brankle questioned how vulnerable the county would be to lawsuits, Ford asked Fort Wayne attorney Jon Bomberger, who specializes in zoning, for his opinion.
"While you might have other rationale for the setbacks from residences at whatever distances those are going to be, there could be a case where someone else might question that decision based on the fact that the distances effectively prohibit that application by regulation," Bomberger said. "It would certainly be a danger to proceed unless you have good, sound reasons for those requirements."
"We’re going to be sued," Ford said to Brankle as the committee continued to discuss the matter. "I don’t want to waste taxpayer dollars for a suit I know is going to happen."
However, setbacks appear to be where the committee is headed:
As the meeting came to a close, the majority of committee members wanted to require that animal feeding operations be built at least 2 miles from a food processing plant and the corporate boundary of a city or town; at least half a mile from a school; and at least a quarter of a mile from a public park or building, residence or public water supply.
September 13th, 2006 09:45
Set backs are not the solution to the many potential problems of factory farms–unless however the set back results in prohibiting factory farms altogether. A set back of the facilities does nothing to move the often offensive manure application to fields futher from residential areas. A set back does nothing to prevent infiltration of valuable ground water resources that do not obey notions of property lines. A set back does not take in to count topography and wind current variables which may lead to a condition where persons living further from factory farms experience worse air pollution than others living closer. County ordinances that will address the problems of factory farms will create financial bonds that can be used to fix environmental harms, limit the amount of manure that can be spread upon fields, mandate closed waste storage (or better yet: treatment) facilities, and create a series of fines for violating these ordinances, which will in turn provide funds for county health officials to perform necessary inspections.