http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/bfpnews/local/5000h.htm
Saturday, January 24, 2004

Right-to-farm plans run into opposition

By Candace Page
Free Press Staff Writer

MONTPELIER -- Strengthening Vermont's right-to-farm law could leave rural residents at the mercy of farms that pollute wells and streams, fill the air with pesticides and create nuisances like unwarranted noise and swarms of insects, two witnesses warned the House Agriculture Committee on Friday.

Environmental activist Annette Smith of Danby recounted the experience of George and Carole Trickett of Orwell, who contend an apple orchard and packing operation across the road have made their home all but unlivable.

Agriculture Agency regulations failed to stop bad practices at Peter and Carla Ochs' farm, Smith alleged, leaving the Tricketts to file a civil lawsuit to protect their property.

A broader right-to-farm law that protected farmers who substantially change their operations after neighbors move in would make even that legal remedy nearly impossible for neighbors, according to another witness, Yale Law School student Samuel Krasnow of Charlotte.

The committee room grew noticeably hushed at times as Smith told the Tricketts' side of the Orwell story -- a right-to-farm dispute that ended up in the Vermont Supreme Court.

The high court ruled Ochs was not protected by the right-to-farm law, which is intended to protect farmers from nuisance lawsuits. In the decision's wake, farmers, the Douglas administration and many legislators are eager to broaden the law to make sure it does cover farmers as their operations change and grow.

Smith recounted the Tricketts' view of how Ochs' operation changed in the mid-1990s after he began storing, packing and shipping apples six months a year or more.

She described diesel fumes and noise from a steady stream of tractor-trailer trucks idling late into the night just outside the Tricketts' home, their headlights shining directly into the house. She handed out Agriculture Agency memos documenting one pesticide and one manure violation at the Ochs' orchard. She showed a court case in which Ochs was convicted of unlawful mischief after an altercation with Trickett.

"The Tricketts live every day in a circumstance that everyone in this room would find intolerable. They have been deprived of the value of their home. I am one of many people who has advised them to leave, but in reality, nobody would purchase their property," she told the committee.

Committee Vice Chairman Robert Starr, D-Troy, shook his head when she finished.

"I just feel bad for the Tricketts," he said. "The last thing this committee would ever condone is farmers' being bad neighbors."

In an interview from his apple packing plant, Ochs later defended his farming practices. Agriculture Secretary Steve Kerr defended his agency's oversight of the Ochs' orchard.

"We are being attacked unmercifully," Ochs said. "We're just trying to make a living farming and farming is changing. I think that's as much as I would like to say."

Ochs said he tried "big time" to accommodate his operation to lessen the impact on the Tricketts, but he declined to say what actions he has taken. He acknowledged paying a pesticide fine and declined to comment about the court conviction.

Kerr said his agency responded to every complaint about Ochs within its jurisdiction. He said under his predecessor, Leon Graves, "the department was very aggressive in working with the Ochs and Tricketts." He noted, however, that he has authority only to regulate pesticides and manure runoff, not issues like noise and odor.

He also said the committee shouldn't base its decisions on the Orwell orchard case.

"Neither the Tricketts nor the Ochs seem to have been model citizens," he said. "Bad facts make bad law."

Krasnow -- whose Vermont home is near a proposed large farm operation opposed by neighbors -- said Vermont's law is fine as it is. Extending protections to growing, changing farm operations would deprive rural residents of their ability to protect their property from factory-style farms, he said.

"Vermont's current right-to-farm law is working well, evidenced by the fact that precisely zero reasonable expansions by farmers have been denied right-to-farm nuisance immunity in 22 years," Krasnow said.

Friday was the first time the committee has heard from opponents of a stronger law. Committee Chairwoman Ruth Towne, R-Berlin, had planned a committee vote on the bill, but no action was taken.

Instead, she has scheduled testimony next week so the Agriculture Department can respond to Smith's story. Ochs said he hasn't been invited to testify and doesn't plan to do so.

Contact Candace Page at 660-1865, 229-9141 or cpage@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com