County residents launch suit against state’s DES

Columbia, South Carolina – A group of citizens from the Mountville area have filed suit along with the South Carolina Environmental Law Project in Columbia to challenge S.C. Department of

Health and Environmental Control authorization this past spring of new poultry houses on the eastern end of Lisbon Road.

The lawsuit is against the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services, the name given July 1 to the environmental wing of DHEC. Agency officials granted full approval for eight poultry houses each on two separate but adjacent properties on the north side of Lisbon Road near the intersection of Highway 72.

“The agency doesn’t comment on pending or active litigation,” said a response from DHEC media, “but the ‘Requests for a Contested Case Hearing’ was filed with the South Carolina Administrative Law Court.”
The lawsuit was filed July 19. It followed a public meeting in April when the community members, who call their group “South Carolinians for Responsible Agricultural Practices,” had requested DHEC hold the public hearing at the Mountville Fire Station so they could explain their concerns to the environmental officials.
Charles “Scooty” Blackmon, a primary organizer of the community group, said on Tuesday that because DHEC would not reconsider its authorization, the community members felt it needed to take further action.
Their primary argument is they feel that the property is too close to the Little River Watershed.
“(One property) is no more than 250 yards from a classified wetlands, and the wetland is at the bottom of a slope that drops in elevation by 45 feet,” Blackmon said. “(The second) site is 350 yards away from a classified wetlands along the impaired Little River with a 35-foot drop from the buildings down to the wetland.

Blackmon said DHEC has already classified Little River as “Impaired” but DHEC officials maintain the new poultry houses are not a threat to the river.

Emily Poole, a staff attorney with the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, said by filing the suit, the group is “asking the court to reverse the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services’ (DES) decision to issue agricultural animal facility operating permits for these new poultry farms.”
According to DHEC officials who spoke at the April meeting, plans for the proposed “closed system” farms meet all the state’s requirements, and are sufficient to protect nearby land and water. Blackmon claims, however, the state recently loosened its regulations when he believes it needed to tighten them. The community group hired an engineer who agreed with them that the proximity to the wetlands was a potential issue, and he also described the soil type as ENON, which Blackmon said can become unstable under heavy loads.
Other complaints include the potential for more truck traffic, odor, debris and flies, which he said are concerns to neighbors who “are surrounded by 57 poultry farms already in the Mountville area,” Blackmon said.
Laurens County Council Chairman Brown Patterson said zoning is often mentioned as a way to deny more poultry farms in the area, but he doesn’t see countywide zoning as an option. He added that he isn’t especially familiar with the Right to Farm Act, but that even if zoning were in place, the wide variety of farms already located in the Mountville community would most likely deem the entire region for agriculture.
But regardless, Patterson said, “anything the state dictates trumps anything the county would say about it. DHEC regulations always outweigh our county regulations.”
Blackmon grew up on Lisbon Road and still has family there but he lives on his in-laws’ family farm in Clinton. He said taking strong action against the state’s decisions puts him and others in the group in direct opposition to the work of his neighbors, former neighbors and lifelong friends, and that’s a frustrating position.
“I’m an ag supporter,” Blackmon said, explaining his father in law was formerly a poultry grower, and Blackmon said he produces timber as an agricultural product. “But most of the poultry operations in the county are concentrated right there in Mountville.”