Chicken ‘scratched’

Dooly County Planning Commission delays vote on controversial zoning variance

Eight million chickens.

That was the estimated number “that will be passing through this property,” said Gail Thompson during a Dooly County Planning Commission meeting Sept. 25. It was a meeting centered on controversy and attended by about 50 residents; so many that the meeting had to be moved from the Planning Commission office to the courthouse. They were at odds with a Zoning Variance request from JB Outside Interests, LLC, which in this case traces back to a plant/land/facilities formerly owned by Tyson Foods but sold to House of Raeford Farms back in 2024.

The variance was for “Parcels #16-10 and #14-19, currently zoned Agricultural. The requested variance is to reduce the required 300-foot setback for chicken houses to 150 feet from all property lines as site plans depicts on seven houses. The purpose of the variance is to maximize the use of the property while accommodating the existing irrigation system located on the parcels.”

Thompson wasn’t done.

“I’ve done more research the last two or three weeks than I’ve ever done in my life,” she said. The problem was at that time she was only speaking to those who had attended. The commission had already been dismissed and left.

The details behind that were a letter was read at the very beginning from the “Council of Columbia Farms of Georgia, Inc.” It read, “We respectfully request that our hearing … be continued or deferred for approximately 30 days to the next available hearing date acceptable to the planning commission.” The reason for the request, the letter stated, was that the applicant’s representative had had surgery and needed to recover.

“The application expressly extends to the existing application to remain pending and active with its original filing date and application record preserved. The applicant is requesting only that consideration of the pending application to be continued to a later hearing date.”

The commission members only considered it for a moment before a motion was made, seconded and a 30-day extension was granted. It was decided they would take it back up Nov. 9 at their regular 5:30 p.m. meeting. (The meeting location is yet to be determined, but if the crowd is the same as it was this past time, there’s a good chance it will be back at the courthouse.)

County Attorney Burt Gregory would not grant the residents to talk to the commission; his justification being that if he did, the commission would be disqualified at the next hearing.

Said Thompson to the residents. “Each house is 585 feet by 56 feet. That’s larger than the old farm poultry houses. So, there are 48 proposed houses on Highway 230, which is South Oaks, and 24 proposed houses on Folks Road and Horseshoe, the corner. We have the site plans for those two parcels.

“OK, 72 houses. This is just quick numbers. That’s 20,000 chickens per house is a very conservative number. Times 72 houses. That’s 1.5 million chickens at one time on these two parcels.

“There are five to seven flocks that go through from baby to full grown out to the processing plant in Vienna each year.” That, she said, was the eight million chickens passing through. She continued: “There’s a three percent mortality rate. These are all UGA numbers. There’s a three percent mortality rate. So, that’s 240,000 dead chickens to be disposed of every year. That’s about 650 chickens per day. That’s 317 tons per year of carcasses that have to be properly disposed of. There are 10,000 tons of litter manure each year. 45,000 tons of feed that has to come from the seed plant in Oglethorpe to the farms.

“There’s 25 million gallons of water that the chickens will use. That’s for their drinking water, cleaning up and processing everything.

“And how will that affect our wells? How will that affect our water quality?”

She also mentioned traffic, saying it would equate to 4,000 trucks per year, bringing in feed, taking out carcasses, et cetera.

“So how can this company and this commission say that this project will not affect our quality of life,” she said. “It’s going to affect our air. There are a lot of gases that are emitted as manure matures. And that affects the quality. There are hazardous gases in the air, in our water systems, etc. So, it’s environmental, and we are on the Flint River Basin.” (There was actually a Flint River Representative at the meeting that was going to speak.) “How is that going to affect our quality of life?”

Just before Gail spoke, her husband, Gary did. The two live in Atlanta but have a second home in Vienna. He said he believed the delay – although someone pointed out it was easily verifiable – was because the company couldn’t meet the eight qualifiers for the variance and wanted more time to prepare.

Among his issues was Dooly County’s “representatives. We have five of them. They are not being transparent. They, first of all, I understand they have a tremendous challenge. You’ve got a company leaving. You’ve got an empty plant. The title is sitting in Vienna’s name and along with the Industrial Development Committee. They’ve got revenue bonds on it, that kind of thing.

“So, they need to preserve the jobs, keep the plant going. So, the company comes in. We welcome the company. But we need them to be responsible citizens with us and make sure that they leave Dooly County better than they found it, not worse than they found it.”

At play, he said, was “vertical integration,” when, he said, a company takes control of every step of the process.

“So, as they do these new houses, our independent small farmers that have four houses, six houses, whatever, they’re suddenly competing with the company and their houses. And so, if you read about vertical integration, what you’ll learn is there are a lot of people that get hurt.

“If things slow down, where do you think the chicks are going to go? They’re going to go to the company houses, not to the independent growers.

“So, they begin to have more leverage than they already have. They’ve got all the leverage right now, but the leverage will get worse.

“So, if I’m a grower and I’ve got four houses, I borrowed money to build them. I had this contract. I expect to be able to be paid over time. And then now I’m not getting the chicks because they told me my houses are seven years old, they’re not up to speed, they’re not competitive with theirs. So, they could either cut me back, put more pressure on my contract, that kind of thing.

“So, we need to understand the implications of this.”

Going back to the representatives on the issue of transparency, Thompson said his personal opinion was that the company came in, the city welcomed them, and got them industrial revenue bond financing; basically, they got a low interest rate and avoided paying taxes on the facility during that period, to which he equated to giving someone a scholarship to lower costs.

They expanded the plant, he said, doubled the wastewater treatment plant and next thing you know, “They’re coming. They meet with our commissioners. And next thing you know, they changed the setback from 1500 feet to 300 feet.

“So I call that zoning to order. The customer wanted 300 feet, so they got 300 feet. None of us know much about it unless you’re really tracking this stuff. We don’t all track this stuff. We’ve got our lives to live.

“So how did we find out about this? They decided after drawing, well, we want to preserve these pivots. We get more houses on here if we have a less setback. So let’s go from 300 feet to 150. Well, that requires putting a sign up on the site and that kind of thing.

“So there’s where the can of worms started. People saw the signs and, ‘What is this all about? Chicken houses? What do you mean chicken houses?’

“Meanwhile, they go into closed sessions. They go into closed sessions and have discussions. Where is the transparency? We need to hold them accountable for being transparent. Have meetings like this where they lay out the plan and we know where they’re going.”

Thompson continued that he wasn’t saying they’re a bad company. He even gave a little history lesson on them and said the poultry business was very necessary. “If you look at your own knives, you can see we’re regularly eating chicken.”

But what he did say he’d like to see was the residents say “no” to the variance, demand more transparency from the commissioners, have more meetings and have the company’s representatives come down and give a presentation.

“Tell us what they’ve done, what their plan is, how are they going to mitigate these issues that are important in terms of our environment, our water, our roads, all the things that go in here. So we need to hear their plan.”