A member of Towamensing Township’s Agricultural Security Board has resigned because of a conflict of interest.

In a memo sent to township supervisors, Roy Christman said he is leaving his post as secretary, effective March 22.

Christman is a charter member of Save Carbon County, a group originally formed to fight the PennEast Pipeline that was planned to transport gas from the fracking industry across Carbon County.

He said Save Carbon County is now engaged in other projects to protect and enhance the natural environment in the county; it backed the bond issue passed last November to preserve farmland and purchase open space, and it was recently successful in fighting a housing development near Mauch Chunk Lake.

The group is working to give municipalities the right to regulate extreme farming activities like industrial livestock farming and the use of unregulated sewage sludge.

“I don’t see how I in good conscience can continue to be secretary to the Towamensing Township Ag Security Board and be a member of Save Carbon County,” he said.

Christman has been associated with the township’s Ag Security Board since its inception, signing up Mrs. John Christman, Mahlon Christman, and Marie White with 230 acres; Charles and Ruth Beer with 78; Michael Bartholomew with 17; Renee and Keith Youse with 84; Mary Lou Bowser with 11; Richard Graver with 65; Fred and Hilda Eckhart with 121, and Christman’s parents, Ellen and Elwood Christman with, at that time, 12.

In 1989, he interviewed Earl Beers of Old Homestead Tree Farm for the “Towamensing Times,” a quarterly periodical Christman published featuring township personalities and news.

“Mr. Beers explained that a farmer who puts his or her land into the Ag Security Area had nothing to lose,” he said. “The farmer could still sell or subdivide the land.

“What the program did was to protect the farmer from lawsuits or harassment when carrying out ‘standard agricultural practices’ such as manure spreading or orchard spraying. At the time, more and more non-farmers were moving into the township, and lawsuits and complaints were sure to arise.”

In 2010, Christman said then Supervisor Penny Kleintop asked him to serve as secretary to the board, because she was aware Roy and his wife Linda had put their 23 acres into the Pennsylvania Farmstead Preservation Program and were supporters of farmland preservation.

Changes in the law

Christman said The Right to Farm Act passed in 1982 “seemed eminently reasonable to me.”

He said The Right to Farm Act also had a clause that said normal farm activities were safe from interference except for any activity which endangered the health, safety and welfare of local residents or threatened to pollute streams or wells.

“Then Big Ag got into the act. When I was growing up (in the 1950s), a lagoon was something in the South Seas.

“Now, it is a giant pond of waste from hundreds, even thousands, of pigs and cattle crowded into feed lots.”

Christman said the Nutrient Management Act went into effect in 1987 and Act 38, called the ACRES Act, was passed in 2022.

“Both of those acts were opposed by the Association of Township Supervisors because they took away the right of local municipalities to regulate sewage sludge or odor in any way,” he said. “The law was backed by the Farm Bureau, an interest group that generally acts on behalf of large corporate farms.”

In recent years, the township has seen an increase in the use of sewage sludge on local fields.

“Sludge is the material left over after household waste is treated in municipal treatment plants,” he said. “Class A sludge is heated to lessen the smell and kill most pathogens, but it is my understanding that most of the sludge applied to fields in Carbon County is Class B, self-regulated by the companies that provide the sludge to the farmers.”