Southold Town issued a stop work order Monday at the site of a proposed new chicken farm on Ackerly Pond Lane, citing construction was begun “before first obtaining Planning Board approval and a building permit.”
The notice, posted at the Ackerly Pond Lane entrance to the property, says work can resume “when the Planning Board has issued site plan approval and the Building Department has issued Building Permits.”
On Tuesday morning, June 30, Jasmine Lane resident John Reichert, whose property backs up to the proposed 16-acre chicken farm, showed our reporter what appeared to be a hoop house being erected on the neighboring property.
Rejuvenate Farms has proposed to build “a pasture-raised organic egg farm on Long Island using rotational grazing, prioritizing humane care and practicing regenerative management.”
The farm’s founder, Grant Callahan, was also at his property Tuesday morning. He told The Beacon’s reporter the hoop house-style chicken shelters do not have foundations and are “on skids with skis” so they can be moved around the property, as is the case at several other nearby farms that raise chickens. He declined to comment further.
The farm has raised the hackles of residents in the neighboring Jasmine Lane subdivision since the Southold Town Planning Board began considering the application to build a storage barn there in January of this year.
They submitted a petition to the Planning Board at that time with nearly 200 signatures stating that “commercial poultry operations of this scale are well-documented to generate unavoidable negative impacts, including persistent odors, ammonia emissions, airborne particulates, pathogenic dust, noise, pests and increased risk of airborne pathogens.”
“The people who were elected to protect the town — I think it’s malfeasance. I never in all my wildest thoughts every thought anybody in a position of political power would allow something like this to happen,” said Mr. Reichert on Tuesday.
He added that allowing a chicken farm there would be the legacy of Town Supervisor Al Krupski, a farmer, and Planning Board Chairman Jim Rich. He said he believes Mr. Krupski’s lack of action on the project will turn voters against the Supervisor if he seeks re-election.
The Town Board appoints the Town Planning Board but is prohibited by law from interfering in the Planning Board’s decisions.
Farmers in New York State do not need permits to farm, but Mr. Callahan has proposed the construction of a 2,100-square-foot barn on the property, triggering site plan review from the town’s Planning Board.
Southold Town purchased a development rights easement on the property in 2007 preventing it from being used for anything other than agriculture, though agricultural buildings are allowed.
Mr. Callahan had presented examples of the mobile chicken shelters to the Planning Board at its March 23 meeting in response to a request for more details about the farming operation. They are not included in the site plan as currently proposed.
At the March meeting, the Southold Town Fire Marshal had also requested a load-bearing fire access road from the end of Jasmine Lane, where there is an existing hydrant. Planning Board members had asked Mr. Callahan at that time to get a price on the fire access road and then return to discuss the matter further.
Neighbors, who have appeared in force at the March 23 meeting and at numerous recent Town Board meetings, have since questioned why the town seemed to be encouraging access to the farm through their development instead of through Ackerly Pond Lane, a rural road farther from the center of Southold.
But the status of that request for a road may be shifting.
In a June 18 letter to the Planning Department, Fire Marshal Robert Corwin said that “as long as it is an agricultural storage building, a Fire Apparatus Access Road is not required. BUT as soon as one or more persons are in the building for an extended period of time doing work, a road is required.”
Chief Building Inspector Michael Verity also issued a memo to the Planning Board June 19 stating “an agricultural storage building does not legally require a bathroom facility. However, this exemption applies only if the structure is exclusively used to house farm implements, feed, etc. and is not a place of human habitation, a processing facility, or a public space.”
At the March 23 meeting, Town Planner Mara Cerezo said there had also been some controversy over felling of trees on the property this winter.
She said the town’s Police Department was contacted by both the neighbors and the property owner, who complained of “trespassing and harassment of workers on site.”
Mr. Callahan had received permission from the Planning Department for “selective clearing” prior to the site plan approval, because the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation recommends only cutting trees between Dec. 1 and Feb. 28, which is the time endangered northern long-eared bats are not in local woodlands.
The Planning Board next meets July 13, but the agenda for that meeting has not yet been set, according to a Planning Department spokesperson. Brian Cummings, the Senior Town Planner assigned to the project, was unavailable for comment Tuesday morning. We will update this post if further information becomes available.
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