To the Editor:

Adam Atkinson’s recent article “Potsdam Wants Less Restrictive Chicken Law” (July 29-Aug. 4 edition of North Country This Week) was quite amusing. Sadly, neither the law he was discussing nor the Village Board’s rejection of it is at all amusing. The Board was right to vote the proposed law down, not because it is too restrictive, but because it’s a bad law as written and not restrictive enough.

What does the law, as it was proposed, really do? It purports to “permit and regulate poultry raising in the Village.” It does permit poultry-raising, but, outside of the setback requirements for a coop, it barely “regulates” anything.

Basically, the real brunt of regulating poultry raising in the Village falls on the neighbors of those residents who want to have chickens. They have to give their consent. Some neighbors will give it, some won’t. Hard feelings will ensue—as they often do in these small neighbor matters. But, never mind, the Village will remain above the fray; they’ll just let the neighbors duke it out.

However, let’s say that all the neighbors do agree to have a coop next door, what then? Papers will be filed, a site inspection carried out and that’s it. There is no provision in the law for periodic site inspections to keep poultry raisers on their toes and their coops in good order. Basically, the chicken raisers are on the “honor system”—they will not compost chicken feces, they will not mistreat their birds or slaughter them in the Village, they will dispose of the corpses appropriately.

It's all great until there is a complaint. And, of course, there will be complaints. What happens then according to law as currently written? Well, clearly, the Code Enforcement Officer has to investigate. And then what? It’s not at all clear. There are no provisions in the law for fines for violators. There’s no indication of how many “complaints” have to be lodged before the Village withdraws the poultry raiser’s permit to maintain a coop. There’s nothing in the law that speaks to what happens when or if a coop has to come down. It’s a sad fact, but chicken coops are really dirty; you can’t just abandon them without a thorough site clean-up. Who in the present law is charged with overseeing the sanitary removal of a coop? No one. The issue isn’t even addressed.

And, there’s another issue wholly unaddressed in the current law. And that’s this. What happens when the neighbor of a poultry raiser decides to sell his or her house? Does the new buyer have a say in whether he/she is willing to have avian neighbors? Or do chicken coops get “grandfathered in”? We have ample evidence in the Village of the effects of grandfathered properties that have, effectively, blighted whole neighborhoods. Do we need another occasion for this to happen?

Finally, the issue of “food sovereignty” keeps coming up as a moral or enobling justification for poultry raising in the Village. No one has defined this concept, and probably for good reason. Left vague, it sounds harmless—a snazzy way of promoting self-sufficiency as a hedge against an uncertain future. I agree that the future is uncertain, but I think that, if the goal of the poultry raisers is self-sufficiency, their path forward is clear: buy a farm and work it, let your chicken range free under Northern skies! They will thank you and those of us who don’t relish the idea of chickens in the Village will too.

LuAnn Lange

Potsdam