BERNARDSTON — Fed up with the fumes and dust from a neighboring pheasant farm, Bernardston Country Estates residents have asked the town Board of Health to force the farm to close.
Residents of the Country Estates mobile home park have complained to the Board of Health multiple times since Full Flight Farms expanded to the property adjacent to the Estates in 2002, but nothing has come of it. In 2005, inspections from several state departments, including the Department of Public Health and the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, found that the farm was doing nothing incorrectly. But the residents claim that the farm affects their health and quality of life.
“This is the worst time of year coming up,” said Country Estates President Paul Parda in an email to The Recorder. “It’s already stinking to high heaven when it’s hot and humid out. Soon we will have to live with dust with bird feces in it covering our houses, cars and property.”
Cristóbol Bonifaz, the lawyer representing the Country Estates, sent a letter this summer to the Board of Health demanding a public hearing for residents to present evidence of the farm’s impact on their health. The letter demands that, if in the hearing the Board of Health finds that the pheasant farm “presents an unreasonable risk to the health and lives” of the residents, that the farm be banned from operating.
“It’s just like if someone has a sewage problem next door to you,” Bonifaz said. The Board of Health, he said, must hold a hearing now because its function is to investigate problems like this one and to protect residents.
Board of Health Clerk Jennifer Clark said Wednesday that the letter had been forwarded to the town’s attorney. She declined to comment further.
A person who answered the phone at Full Flight Farms last week declined to comment, then hung up immediately.
The closest the Country Estates and Full Flight Farms have ever come to an agreement was in 2005, when the town offered to pay for mediation between the two parties. Edwin Gray, the owner of the farm, said at the time that he would prefer for the issue to be settled as a civil matter in Superior Court. That meeting ended with the residents asking for “compassion for your neighbor,” and Gray retorting: “Would this trailer park enjoy a pig farm next door?”
Most recently, Country Estates residents brought their complaints to the Board of Health at a meeting this past October. But because the discussion took place in the “citizens’ concerns” section of the meeting and was not an official agenda item, the board did not come to any decision. The board has yet to respond to those complaints, according to Parda, who attended a health board meeting Wednesday night and reported that the board members declined to discuss the issue until they consult with their lawyer.
Parda said that the residents of the Estates have no problem with Bernardston’s “right to farm” laws, but that “he (Gray) never should have been allowed to put a pheasant farm adjacent to a mobile home park where there’s 60 people.”
“If they could make the dust and stink go away, I could care less,” Parda said.
Contact Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 261.