Pogge Votes for Aquaculture Bill, But It Stalls in Committee

Friday, February 18, 2011

A controversial General Assembly bill that would allow for aquaculture activities on agricultural land was tabled Wednesday after a long committee discussion, though one local representative would rather have seen it come to a vote.

The bill places aquaculture (underwater farming of oysters, crabs, grasses and the like) under the Right to Farm Act, which allows citizens to engage in farming activities on land zoned for agricultural use without first obtaining a special use permit from a locality. York County supervisors opposed the bill, arguing it was intended to circumvent county authority and would effectively tie their hands in the decision-making process. Residents, several supervisors said, would be kept from having their say when neighbors wanted to use their land for farming.

The bill passed the Senate and made its way to the House Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources Committee, where several citizens both for and against it came to argue their case before legislators, including representatives from York County, the oyster industry and the Farm Bureau. The committee voted 12-5 to table the bill after much discussion, effectively putting it on hold unless one of the 12 on the prevailing side decides to resurrect it.

Delegate Brenda Pogge, who represents parts of James City County, York County and Newport News, was one of the five members of the committee who voted against tabling the measure.

“I can’t take into consideration how a bill originated or for whom, as criteria when I make my decision,” she told WYDaily. “I need to look at what a bill will or won’t do.”

Pogge said as she researched the bill and listened to discussions, she felt that there has been lots of misinformation disseminated about it.

“Is aquaculture agriculture? That's the real question [of the bill] to me. I looked at every angle of this for the past two weeks, and the answer is yes, in my opinion… the authority for aquaculture activities is already implied by the code.”

At the meeting, discussion got bogged down with speculation on what the implications of the bill might be, Pogge said. She didn’t agree with the motion to table the bill, because “it’s a hard decision to make, but we needed to talk about it… this [tabling] was the easy thing to do.”

As for York County’s claim that their authority would be diminished, Pogge didn’t agree. “The argument that counties would lose their jurisdiction is wrong. Zoning is under their purview, and they can add setback and other requirements” under the language of the bill. So, counties could change the agricultural zoning of an area, or could change other requirements as they see fit.

She also pointed out that agricultural operations can be limited if they relate to health, safety and general welfare of residents. “With this, the counties have plenty of leeway,” Pogge said.

York County Attorney James Barnett agreed that the bill “doesn’t rob localities of all flexibility, but it does rob it of some.” He feels that “the SUP process is a very valuable process, and [with it] the county can decide on any particular parcel of land… if a use is a good fit there.”

At the Board of Supervisors meeting earlier in the week, Barnett discussed the issue briefly with the board, and explained that much of the county’s rural residential land (which allows for agricultural use) is too small for a large-scale commercial agricultural use, such as a large farm. This isn’t the case with an aquaculture use under the new bill, which could extend far into the Bay and its tributaries and isn’t limited by land size.

“Our fear is you could find… a rather substantial agricultural operation right in a neighborhood,” Barnett said.

Now that the bill has stalled, the county will have a chance to “rethink, and possibly change zoning, in response to [the bill],” Barnett told WYDaily. “York County will look at the RR district, see what parts have outgrown the need to accommodate commercial agriculture.”

The bill was unexpected, he said, and left the county reeling at what the possible implications could be. “If the bill had become effective [this year], that’s a short time to do a lot of thinking,” he said.

Now that the committee has tabled the bill and recommended that further study be done and the county has time to digest the idea, “I think the county will be content if the bill were to come back next year,” Barnett said. “Maybe once we’ve had a chance to look at it, maybe it won’t be objectionable.”