BERNARDSTON — Fullflight Farm, the pheasant farm on Brattleboro Road, may face new regulation from the Board of Health in response to complaints from residents of the neighboring Country Estates trailer park.
The Country Estates submitted a letter to the Board of Health in July, asking it to take action on what the residents claim are health risks posed by the farm’s odors and dust.
Specifically, the letter asked the board to shut down the farm if it could be proven to be a health risk — a measure that is “almost unheard of,” said Board of Health Clerk Jennifer Clark.
The Board of Health established a protocol in August for the police to create a legal report when the farm’s dust and odors become especially bad, although the residents of the Country Estates have only used the protocol once since then, Clark said.
Now the board is consulting with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Agricultural Resources on abatement strategies. Clark said that the board could not comment on what those could entail.
But residents of the Country Estates are still frustrated with the Board of Health’s seemingly slow response. Country Estates President Paul Parda said the Board of Health had scheduled a meeting for Nov. 14 that would have given the residents of the Country Estates and the owners of Fullflight Farm a platform to explain their positions, but the meeting had to be postponed due to a newly discovered conflict of interest with the town’s attorney.
That meeting will be rescheduled after the Selectboard approves the hiring of a different attorney for the Board of Health, Clark said. The Selectboard’s next meeting is Nov. 20.
The Board of Health does not know when the meeting might happen, but Clark said she expects it to happen by the end of 2018.