February 2, 2007

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Bill would add cities, towns to Right to Farm Act

Call your Senator now in opposition to HB 1823

HB 1823 (Suit) does away with the ability of towns and cities to require an agricultural or timber operation to obtain a special use permit or special exception before starting an agricultural operation on lands in an agricultural zoning district.

This means that if your town or city has land zoned for agriculture, a commercial farm could decide to start a hog farm or chicken farm and you would have almost no zoning authority to limit it. Towns and cities have accommodated older farms that are in the area by keeping the land in agricultural zoning. The farms are typically pastures with beef cattle or horses.

A large group of towns and cities reported to VML that their agricultural zones have residences nearby. If HB 1823 becomes law, the town or city would be forced to allow agricultural operations that produce noise and odors offensive to large numbers of residents.

Also if HB 1823 becomes law, the towns and cities that have accommodated farms by keeping the agricultural zoning will be tempted to rezone the farms to residential or other uses in order to prevent chicken operations or hog farms, or other uses that simply don’t fit in a town or city. This will cause farmers to LOSE their current protections that exist by reason of agricultural zoning.

Please note that the bill would allow towns and cities to require the agriculture operations to be set back from residences or to set a minimum area for the operations, which would lessen the harm of the bill some. The Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee will take up the bill Monday morning, Feb. 5.

Please call or e-mail senators on the committee today and ask that:

(1) towns be removed from the bill and ...

(2) remove all cities that have less than 20 square miles of agricultural land.

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