County moving forward with ag preservation area ordinance

 Planning and Zoning Administrator Bonnie Brent-Dowell said Seth Grigg, the executive director of the Idaho Association of Counties had told her they (the legislature) wanted to cut Planning and Zoning completely out of the APA process. 

 “I don’t think it was intended to go through the Planning and Zoning (commission),” Brent-Dowell told the board. “Which is odd, because if it’s put into Title 5, it’s supposed to (go through P&Z).”

 Entering its first year, the state’s plan doesn’t hold any financial incentive for farmers and ranchers to offset the high dollar amounts landowners can get from selling to developers, and the commissioners seem keenly aware of it. Adding the fact that confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are on the list of uses not allowed within an APA unless otherwise approved by the board of county commissioners, Washington County’s commissioners voiced some skepticism over the program’s intent.

 Asked by the board to lend legal advice surrounding the new requirement, Washington County Prosecuting Attorney Delton Walker said it looks like the APA program will be operated by the state. Even though there’s no current incentive, Walker questioned the long-term motives of the program if or when landowners receive a benefit for entering into it, and then being able to pull back out and develop the property for another, larger benefit later.

 Brent-Dowell agreed, saying, “That was my one issue, in this code it seems fairly easy to take it back out.”

 “The only thing I can’t figure out is why they wouldn’t put an (existing) CAFO on there. Is it because they want to develop it in the future?” Walker asked. “This is the reason I feel like there’s ulterior motives. If you say you can’t put a CAFO here, the only reason I can see why you would say that is because if they put this in an APA, and then put a CAFO in there, when they pull it back out, they couldn’t put in a subdivision.”

 “You’d think they would be welcoming CAFOs into this, not the opposite,” board chairman Lyndon Haines said. 

. “Exactly,” Walker responded. “This is not consistent with the preservation of agriculture at all. That’s why I feel like there’s ulterior motives.”

 Walker pointed out that once a CAFO is permitted, “it is next to impossible to get rid of it.”

 Looking at that section of the new code, board member Gordon Wilkerson pointed out the statute does allow commissioners to approve CAFOs within an already permitted APA.

 “So, there’s just one more rope and a tree,” Wilkerson said.