With thousands of flies swarming around their Bachmans Valley homes last summer, neighbors of two egg farms could have aired their complaints promptly if Carroll County had had a "right-to-farm" law, supporters of the proposed law said.
Instead of searching for someone to listen to their complaints, residents could have gone directly to a county committee that would have heard both sides of the issue and proposed a solution.
There is no guarantee that residents would have been satisfied with the committee's recommendation, especially because right-to-farm laws are designed to protect farmers against complaints about their operations.
Carroll County farmers have lobbied for a right-to-farm law for almost five years. Tomorrow, at a hearing at 9:30 a.m. in the County Office Building, county commissioners will hear public comments about a proposal for such a law.
Farmers say they need protection because neighbors who move from urban to rural areas often complain about routine agricultural practices such as spreading manure or running machinery early in the morning.
County officials say they want agriculture to continue to be a strong industry. Carroll has preserved more farmland than any other Maryland county and is among the top counties in the nation for such preservation. The county has preserved about 40,000 of its 290,000 acres of farmland.
Carroll's proposed measure is more progressive than most other such laws, said Edward Thompson Jr., director of public policy for the American Farmland Trust in Washington.
The county proposal could be more effective than other laws because it calls for a "reconciliation committee" to help resolve problems and would require that buyers or users of property near agriculture operations be notified -- or warned -- about potential problems such as odors, noise, dust, flies or chemicals.
The notices would be included in real estate transfers and property tax bills. They would warn: " 'Caution. You're moving into the [agriculture] area, and you have to be able to assume the risk,' " Mr. Thompson said.
If a farm existed before houses were built nearby, the farmer should be able to continue working if he is following accepted agricultural practices and is managing the operation as experts recommend, said Tim Warman, director of federal policy for the American Farmland Trust.
If a farmer changes his operations, he should consider how the changes affect his neighbors, he said.
Resident Richard E. Geyer said the proposed law goes too far and is unfair to certain property owners. The law could result in lower property values, he said.
Three years ago, Mr. Geyer and his wife, Pat, moved from Montgomery County to a house on 11 acres in the 5300 block of Amberly Drive, off Fleming Road north of Gillis Falls Park.
Their home is secluded and surrounded mainly by forest land. Mr. Geyer said he worries that he would have no recourse if a neighbor started an agricultural operation that caused problems.
Because he had "no reasonable expectation" that he was moving next to a farm, Mr. Geyer said, he should have a right to complain.
"I think it's important there be balance," he said at a county meeting on the proposed law last week.
Nine Carroll farmers drafted the proposed right-to-farm law with help from William Powel, administrator of the county's Agricultural Land Preservation Program, and Charles L. Zeleski, assistant director of the Carroll County Environmental Health Department.
Robert Wheeler, a Finksburg beef cattle farmer who helped draft the law, said he expects the three-member reconciliation committee to deal mostly with complaints about noises and odors.
Most complaints from neighbors involve farmers with livestock operations, Mr. Thompson said.
The goal is to keep those kinds of complaints from becoming lawsuits, Mr. Wheeler said. A resident would be permitted to sue in Circuit Court, however, if not satisfied with the committee's recommendation.
The county Health Department also may investigate a complaint separately, Assistant County Attorney Beth Evans said.
Mr. Wheeler said the committee might handle a complaint about odors when a farmer spreads manure on his fields or generates a lot of noise or dust running his combine.
Both actions are accepted agricultural practices, and a neighbor would not be able to force the farmer to stop if he was performing the job properly.
Neighbors would have better cause to complain if a farmer was tTC allowing trucks to dump scrap lumber and tree trunks from construction sites into a composting pile on his property. That practice would be more suitable to an industrial site, Mr. Warman said.
Neighbors also could complain if a farmer was spreading manure thickly on his land just to dispose of it, not to use it as an effective fertilizer, he said.
Mr. Thompson said the reconciliation committee also would be able to handle complaints from farmers about residents' actions. For example, a farmer might complain that a neighbor's dog had run loose and killed livestock, that a neighbor had disposed of cans that got caught in machinery and damaged it or that a
neighbor cut a fence to permit riding a snowmobile in a field.
Farmers also could complain about people pilfering fruit and other crops from the edges of fields, he said.
The reconciliation committee probably would hear two or three cases a year, Mr. Powel said.
The two egg farms -- County Fair Farms and the George Mullinix farm -- are working to reduce the fly problem, said James A. Finley Jr., a Bachmans Valley resident who said Friday that he planned to attend tomorrow's hearing to learn more about the proposed law.
"By the end of the summer, it did look like things were getting better," he said.
Residents likened the swarms of flies over the summer to a plague and said the insects drove them indoors.