Concerned about potential environmental hazards, stench and increased truck traffic, a group of Westminster homeowners has asked the Carroll County commissioners to place a moratorium on hog farms with more than 250 animals.
Residents of Willowbrook, near a proposed 2,000-hog farm on Indian Valley Trail northwest of the city, mailed a two-page letter to the commissioners yesterday. Copies were sent to state and county environmental officials and politicians, including U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes, Gov. Parris N. Glendening and state Sen. Larry E. Haines.
"I cannot tell you how concerned we are over this matter," wrote John J. Stephens Jr., president of the Willowbrook Homeowners Association. "We ask you to please investigate this matter thoroughly and bring it to a public forum. In the interim, we also ask that no hogs be allowed [on the nearby farm] until your investigation is completed and reported."
The homeowners, who live in 8-year-old homes valued at $250,000 each, mobilized after Westminster farmer Roland H. Mann Jr. said he was planning to expand his hog operation from 50 to 2,000 animals on his farm, less than half a mile from Willowbrook. Mann is building an 80-by-206-foot hog house on his farm, residents said.
Concerns over the Mann hog farm surfaced last month when representatives of the Sierra Club attended a meeting of the Carroll County Environmental Affairs Advisory Board. The board refused to hear the case because neither Mann nor the homeowners group was represented at the meeting, but the panel might hold a meeting to debate Mann's proposed expansion this month, Chairman Kevin Dayhoff said.
County Commissioner Donald I. Dell, a dairy farmer, refused to comment at length yesterday on the Willowbrook residents' request, saying only, "The owner is in complete compliance with all county laws."
The problem is part of a continuing clash in mostly rural counties such as Carroll and Frederick, where growth has spurted in the past decade.
A Carroll farmer painted "HOG FARM" in huge white letters on his Manchester barn two years ago to warn potential homebuyers as a new development went up next door.
Recent complaints over the stench from a 4,000-hog farm on 62 acres in Frederick County -- where manure was collecting at an estimated ton a day -- prompted that county's commissioners to propose legislation banning large feedlots, the first such law in Maryland.
The proposed ordinance would ban new hog-raising operations of 250 or more animals through next March while officials draft more restrictive zoning. A public hearing is scheduled for March 16.
The Sierra Club is sponsoring a town meeting Saturday on hog farming at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg. Hundreds of farmers and homeowners are expected to attend.
"I am extremely concerned," Stephens said. "The quality of life is a question. If it develops into a real problem, what will it do to the value of our homes?"
The average Carroll hog farm is small and independent, but the industry is changing as large corporations seek to sign farmers to contracts to produce large feedlots. In 1997, the last year a sow census was taken, farmers on 60 Carroll farms sold 21,000 hogs, said David L. Greene, a University of Maryland extension agent.
A feedlot of 2,500 or more hogs requires a federal permit issued by Maryland Department of the Environment under the Clean Water Act. The permit requires farmers who plan to get rid of animal waste by spreading it on fields to show how they plan to prevent nitrogen, phosphorus and other potential pollutants from entering ground water.
Such skirmishes occur whenever housing development occurs in farm country, said Tony Evans, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Agriculture.
There were 584 hog farms in Maryland in 1997, Evans said, down from 910 in 1992.
"A lot of people are living there now in big houses that don't want to smell agriculture," Evans says. "They are out there looking for a bucolic lifestyle, and then they get riled up. In the old days, everybody was tied into agriculture."
Pub Date: 3/09/99