A meeting of the Boyle County Fiscal court was held online on April 14 about dead animal composting with a lot of frustration coming from both sides. We heard:

Our magistrate say he didn’t like all the negative remarks coming in about the composting in his area and basically approved of either site being used.

One magistrate brought up a third location. What is happening with that?

One magistrate said he thought that we were basically overreacting to the idea of composting and needed to be further educated about the process. He said the thought of dead animals laying around and being buried close to our homes was not how we should be looking at this.  Do they want this in their backyards?

Waste and Solid Management said they had been working on this for six months and wanted to get something moving.

Well, we citizens have just become aware of the situation in the last couple of weeks and are equally frustrated because we feel the court is trying to placate us. If they approve the plan we will have to deal with it into the future.  I don’t want to watch or smell trucks going by my house and waiting to see if the site is being “managed” correctly.

It keeps being mentioned about the farmers not being able to have their dead cattle taken away since the contract ended in January. One persistent question as a tax paying citizen is why we are paying for this and not the farmers as a by-product of their business?

What about other options? One magistrate said he had a farmer who was interested in doing the composting on his land. Pay him the $70, 000 a year and let him place his value per head on collecting and processing the carcasses. Is the court not willing to entertain negotiating with the farmer(s)? We still feel the court was and is trying to push this through without enough citizens being aware of the issue. We feel it was only the farmers who were notified because of the contract terminating.

Since the issue has been tabled for two weeks, hopefully we can get another public forum to discuss this when it’s safe. In the meantime, we will continue to raise a “stink” with the magistrates, lawyer, the state veterinary and Dr. Higgins at UK with his expertise on the composting of animals.

Karen Sherwood

Danville