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WESTPORT — The town’s Animal Action Committee spent an hour with Dartmouth Public Health Director Christopher Michaud

The Chronicle - 3/15/2017

WESTPORT — The town’s Animal Action Committee spent an hour with Dartmouth Public Health Director Christopher Michaud and Animal Control Officer Sandy Gosselin Monday night, quizzing their neighbors on Dartmouth’s recently “deregulated” animal registration and permitting regulations.

The Westport advisory board reviewed Dartmouth’s new animal regulation process, which requires property owners and livestock growers conducting farm operations on plots under 200,000 square feet — about five acres — to seek annual permits for more than two goats or a dozen chickens.

Permits for such “backyard farms” and small agricultural operations are issued by the Board of Health, and include a stipulation that owners will permit town inspectors to access the property at any time for unannounced inspections.

There are no regulations or permit requirements for agricultural operations on sites over five acres

There are minimum requirements such as space allotments, shelter conditions, and feeding and watering for livestock such as cattle, sheep and pigs in the Dartmouth animal regulations. Permits for any large numbers of animals requires the filing of feeding, food storage, and manure disposal plans. Expenses are covered by a $35 permit fee.

The food storage plans were added to the Dartmouth regulations to deal with the “spoiled food” sometimes used for feeding livestock. The food waste was formerly dumped in landfills, but is being increasingly diverted for feeding pigs or other livestock under a state-sponsored waste diversion program. Stored outdoors, the spoiled food causes nasty odors and attracts rodents, drawing complaints that need to be investigated, Michaud said.

Odor nuisances and rodent infestations reported during any barn visits prompt Board of Health involvement. The animal control officers also try to get the town Agricultural Commission to help encourage the adoption of best practices for whatever problems develop, Gosselin said.

Michaud said the town’s three animal control officers are municipal animal inspectors capable of handling the annual barn visits and kennel inspections required for annual permitting. State inspectors supervise dairy herd operations and large scale poultry farms, it was noted.

The town’s three Board of Health members are also certified animal inspectors, and could help with the annual “census” of animals within the town’s borders, collected on behalf of the state Department of Agricultural Resources’ animal health division. Conducted between September and December, the annual census is the only time that town officials get a good idea of how many animals are in town.

The town relies on voluntary compliance with the permitting process, the public health director said. Trying to locate and count all the animals in town would be an “unmanageable” task for the department, he suggested.

Not all residents keeping domestic animals or raising livestock are reporting to the town, Michaud said. Many small growing operations are discovered as the result of complaints, he added.

“It’s hard to know all the numbers of all of the animals in town” at any given time besides the annual census, Gosselin agreed. Animal owners “are not all rushing in to get a permit” and agree to unlimited inspections, she stressed.

“A few volunteer because they want to be legal, but not all animal owners do,” she said. “Mostly, the problems come from people who won’t come in to register. Those are the most likely complaints."

The Dartmouth animal control officers respond to all animal complaints, and report potential health issues to the Board of Health, Michaud said. All have had livestock-care training as part of a state animal inspector certification process. Gosselin said animal cruelty cases are immediately reported to state authorities, and the local department stays involved in investigating the complaints.

But animal cruelty is hard to prove to a court magistrate or a judge when filing complaints, Gosselin said. More than once, when seeking a complaint or court order, she has been told “you don’t have enough evidence” by a magistrate, she said.

The town doesn’t have any rules specifically governing tenant farmers, Michaud said, instead permitting sites. Non-resident farmers are required to have a designated animal caretaker and alternate contact person listed for all livestock sites. In Westport, piggeries are permitted only if located on the owner’s property.

In Dartmouth, with 20 years of animal control regulations on the books, residents have come to expect that “the Board of Health will protect them” when problems develop with animals on neighboring properties.

Animal Action Committee Chair Shana Shufelt got her board members to generally agree that any kind of animal registry recommended in Westport should be a similar volunteer registry of sites where animals are being raised in significant numbers. That would eliminate the problem of keeping track of tenant farming operations, as each rented plot would be considered a separate operation to be permitted, she said.

Shufelt read a letter from Darrin Mendes, a representative of the Bristol County Farm Bureau who is not a resident, but manages a commercial beef herd in Westport. He suggested the town “register a premises (used for livestock), not a specified number of animals; regulations should be different for commercial and non-commercial livestock keeping."

At that point, the chair declared she was “struggling with the thought that we need to license animals at all.” Simple site permitting for specified livestock species might be easier to implement and supervise, she said, and Westport Animal Control Officer Donna Lambert agreed.

Board of Health Chair Bill Harkins, a member of the action committee, said he would like some way of keeping property owners ultimately responsible for any problems involving animals on their land, even if they live out of town.