LIVESTOCK FACILITY SITING RULES MOVING FORWARD
Monday, August 8th, 2005 -- 2:41 PM
It doesn?t appear it will have a huge impact in Clark County, but agriculturists and environmentalists around the state are watching closely the development of new ?livestock facility siting? rules. The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection is in the process of creating a set of standards that local municipalities can use to grant permits for larger livestock facilities. With the rules, they hope to prevent pressure on boards to pass emergency rules to keep large livestock operations out of an area. But Clark County UW-Extension agent Matt Jorgensen says the rules won?t have much impact on us, because there is very little zoning on the books?"Right now, there's only one (Clark County) township that has conditional use permits for livestock expansion," Jorgensen says. "This siting law would take precedent over the conditional use permit."
"But for townships that don't have any sort of existing livestock siting or livestock building moratorium, this law wouldn't apply. It would still be business as usual, which is there are no rules," Jorgensen says.
The county Planning and Zoning Department would be in charge of administering the new rules. DATCP (dat-cap) revealed some revisions to the rules this week. It?s expected they will go into effect either later this year or early next.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.