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Lawmakers speak on upcoming agriculture bills

Three state lawmakers said Thursday they are trying to pass legislation to help the agricultural community continue to thrive and get business done in Lycoming County.

Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Loyalsock Township, and Reps. Garth Everett, R-Muncy, and Jeff Wheeland, R-Loyalsock Township, gave updates to members of the Lycoming County Conservation District during breakfast Thursday.

Yaw said he would fight to preserve gas impact fees used for dirt and gravel road restoration. Examples of successful road restoration include what is happening in Moreland Township east of Hughesville. The township has 60 miles of roadway and has restored areas that were damaged by flooding in 2011 and 2016 using these funds.

Yaw supports removal of a sales tax exemption on bottled water. It would bring the price up by 30 cents but dedicate funds for conservation purposes.

Yaw, Everett and Wheeland fully support getting broadband expanded in rural areas. Yaw mentioned how tele-medicine is a boom on the horizon and computer linkage will be vital for it to work in this region.

Broadband also would help farmers with automatic milking systems and those with geographic positioning systems in vehicles. It also would assist in technology as farmers spread the right amount of manure or nutrients on fields.

Yaw congratulated Lycoming College biology students for the efforts to study the hellbender, third-largest salamander native to the waterways of the state. Yaw said where the hellbenders are is clean water.

Everett reminded folks about the spread of chronic wasting disease among deer. He said that fenced-in deer touching nose to a wild deer can spread the disease, a protein that has no cure and is not tested until the animal dies and the brain cells are examined.

Wheeland said the deer disease is impactful to agriculture businesses because if a deer dies with it and decomposes in a hay field the plant life around it absorbs the proteins and can pass it to other deer.

In another matter, Everett supports a bill in the House requiring the state Department of Environmental Protection when issuing permits to be reviewed by a third party engineering firm to expedite the process and shorten the length of the permit review.

The conservation district manages items such as clean water, nutrients, agriculture preservation, soil and stream bank erosion, timber and forests, dirt and gravel road, abandoned coal mines, threats from animals and environmental-related concerns.

There are 80 farms and 9,600 acres under farmland preservation. Agriculture preservation helps to alleviate farmers’ debt loads and ensure family farms remain a viable institution.

The district officials said they will also pay close attention to national issues such as the impending Farm Bill before the U.S. Congress.

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