County Commission Lifts Moratorium Put on Poultry House Operation

The Stephens County Board of Commissioners lifts the 90-day moratorium that was previously put on the construction of poultry houses and poultry operations.

After approving the construction of new poultry houses in May, the board wanted to amend the language of the current zoning ordinance for the agriculture intensive district.

The amendments they considered involved increasing the setbacks for poultry operations, the minimum acreage for an agriculture intensive district and also imposing a setback for poultry operations that come within certain distances from schools, colleges, parks and daycare facilities- increasing that to 3,000 feet.

According to Commissioner Dean Scarbrough, the moratorium has been reapproved two times prior to this week’s meeting, lasting at least 6 months.

Commissioner Dennis Bell recommended dropping the moratorium and having the planning and zoning commission look at the verbiage. Commissioner Dean Scarbrough agreed.

“It’s my recommendation that we drop the moratorium, kick the verbiage and stuff back to planning and zoning and let’s go at it the right way,” said Bell.

“I agree,” said Scarbrough. “If we haven’t been able to come up with an agreement to put down and vote on at this point, we don’t need to keep this. It’s actually been two times, this would be our third so that’s already six months. If the planning commission do not see that they have a problem, we thought they had a problem with the language that was in it due to one of the areas of over saturation.”

Bell said that the moratorium be lifted because agriculture plays a major role in Stephens County.

“One thing a lot of people in Stephens County that they really need to do some research on agriculture and how much agriculture brings into Stephens County’s system,” said Bell. “If we didn’t have agriculture, I can tell you we would be broke. This isn’t Gwinnett County, this isn’t Fulton County, this is Stephens County in Northeast Georgia, we rely on our farmers to help load the burden on what we’re doing out here in the county. The biggest thing we’ve got is cattle and poultry I believe and I don’t want to see anything happen to either one of those sections.”

Local poultry farmer Peter Traudt addressed the commission, saying that putting moratoriums into place restricts poultry farmers even more than they already are.

“I would like to think that in the future we could be a little more progressive and realize our opportunities and not turn a blind eye to them,” said Traudt. “The poultry industry feeds everyone in here and I think it’s important to get really down to business about it and not really care of the smell of a chicken house or how far away it is. We have state restrictions, we have federal restrictions, we have many things working against us. Now if you throw a 90-day moratorium on that, he’s got the weather working against him, he’s got state regulations working against him, he’s got things that nature created like rock. We’ve got so many factors that are not working for us without adding more to it.”

The planning commission will now look at the language in the ordinance to decide if any changes need to be made. If not, the ordinance will remain as is.