ATLANTA – Controversial legislation making it harder for Georgia homeowners to file nuisance lawsuits against neighboring agricultural operations cleared the Republican-controlled Georgia House of Representatives Thursday.
The Freedom to Farm Act, which passed 102-62 mostly along party lines, would replace a law the legislature enacted in 1989 governing nuisance suits against farm operations in areas zoned for agricultural use.
Under House Bill 1150, neighbors bothered by bad smells, dust, noise or water pollution emanating from a farm would have one year to file a nuisance suit. After that statute of limitations expires, the farm would be protected, House Agriculture & Consumer Affairs Committee Chairman Robert Dickey, told his House colleagues.
The current law is vague on that point, leaving farmers vulnerable, said Dickey, R-Musella, the bill’s chief sponsor.
“I want to keep our farmers on their tractors, not in a courtroom.” he said.
But the bill’s opponents said the current law has worked for decades, so well that Georgia has not seen a flurry of nuisance suits against farmers.
“I can’t find a single record of a standalone nuisance lawsuit against a farmer in Georgia,” said Rep. Debbie Buckner, D-Junction City. “[The current law] is clear. It is concise. It is well defined.”
Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, said the bill would take away protection from suits the current law provides to farmers whose operations existed before residential encroachment in their neighborhood.
“We’re infringing on private property rights,” she said. “This is no longer a matter of who was there first.”
Opponents also charged the bill’s real purpose is to pave the way for giant corporate chicken farms to move into Georgia.
But Dickey pointed to a provision added to the bill that protects residential property owners from “confined animal-feeding operations” including corporate hog farms.
“This bill is not about big farmers but being able to keep our small family farms,” he said. “They cannot weather multiple nuisance lawsuits by developers and neighbors that want them to go away.”
The bill now moves to the Georgia Senate.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.