RAYMOND – On Sept. 22, animal welfare advocates will discuss their concerns about fireworks and potentially draft a bill to regulate the distance they can be set off from farm animals, at a meeting in Woolwich at the Taste of Maine Restaurant.

Since consumer-grade fireworks became legal in Maine last year, no laws have been passed to restrict how far fireworks can be set off from livestock, says Raymond resident Julie Sutherland, who is organizing the meeting.

Sutherland said she anticipates several dozen attendees at Saturday’s event. The plan is to draft a bill that will enact strict regulations on the distance fireworks can be used near farm animals. It will also aim to address other issues, such as an earlier curfew for fireworks displays and what kinds can be allowed, she said.

According to Sutherland, the meeting is open to the public. The goal is to have the bill drafted no later than Sept. 27, she said, which is when state legislators must submit their bills to leadership for consideration when the session starts in January. Sutherland said the group is working with Rep. Mike McClellan, R-Raymond, as well as other legislators.

The notion that animal welfare is not addressed in the fireworks law has both stunned and motivated Sutherland, who is known in Raymond for rescuing roosters as well as other animals.

“Neither the government nor Maine State Fire Marshal has made any provisions or boundaries where animals and fireworks are concerned,” Sutherland said.

Harmful to animals

“We have a neighbor who likes to shoot fireworks up over our barn,” 200 to 300 feet in the air, said Sutherland, who owns a small hobby farm in Raymond, where she cares for 20 roosters, two horses, two dogs and six cats.

Since fireworks became legal in Maine Jan. 1, 2012, neighbors have been allegedly shooting off fireworks over her barn and “stressing out” her animals. The unpredictability of fireworks startles the animals causing them to become ill or even injure themselves.

She claims that the fireworks go off above her barn at least once every two weeks. But Sutherland isn’t the only animal lover concerned about how animals are affected by the explosions.

“Calves have been stampeded and killed because of someone lighting off fireworks,” she said, referring to an incident at a farm in Topsham.

Tina Bisson, who owns Bisson’s Farm in Topsham, where she tends to 300 head of cattle, said one of her calves were killed and several were injured when a neighbor set off fireworks too close to her pasture.

According to Bisson, Topsham has since enacted an ordinance that prohibits the use of fireworks altogether, but Bisson said something must be done at the state level in order to stop the perpetrators.

“Somebody set off fireworks and the cattle stampeded, running over their calves. I lost one [calf], but a lot of them got hurt,” Bisson said. “We were in terror every night because of fireworks.”

While the newness of fireworks has worn off, Bisson said, “The cows could’ve gone through barbed wire and into the road. Could you imagine what that would be like? That would have been a vet bill that no one could touch.”

Fireworks have also been known to spook Bisson’s daughter’s horses at a stable she owns in Bowdoinham, leading to the horses getting severely injured.

“We fought him all last year on it and begged him not to do it,” Bisson said. “We had a sheriff [involved], we talked to the town, went to the Legislature and tried to pass a bill … the DA [District Attorney] won’t do anything because of the way the laws read.”

The neighbor who set off the fireworks would do it three or four times a week, even in the daytime, she said, but she has not heard any recent bangs.

But it doesn’t mean it won’t happen again.

Deb Deering, who owns a farm on Tenney Hill in Raymond, said her animals, which includes six horses, chickens, ducks, a dog and a cat, are occasionally frightened by fireworks, and she worries about the sudden bursts.

“It’s very annoying, you never know when they [fireworks] are going to go off,” Deering said.

In the summer, people were setting off fireworks near her home once or twice a week, she said. While none of her animals have been injured as a result, she feels for the other farmers.

“It makes the animals restless,” Deering said. “It’s very unpredictable.”

When fireworks were banned in Maine, Deering said, the fact they were shot off during the holidays, and less frequently, did not disturb her animals to the extent they do now.

As a foster care provider, she’s also fearful the “unpredictable” explosions could also hurt her children as they play outside in the yard.

“I have a lot of kids coming in and out of my house all the time,” Deering said, commenting that, people who use fireworks don’t seem to care where they land or how they affect their neighbors.

Before fireworks became legal, Deering said she could plan for the large fireworks displays and didn’t have to worry about whether her animals would survive.

“Now it’s kind of random. You never know when people are going to set them off,” Deering said. “Not knowing is the hardest part.”

Matt Randall, agricultural compliance supervisor with the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, said, “certainly there is a concern [about] animals and fireworks. We don’t have a long history with this because we haven’t had an opportunity to collect the data, but we have had telephone calls from livestock producers expressing their concern.”

“The department [of agriculture] has relied on and encouraged local control over the issue,” Randall said.

He pointed to rural towns like Raymond that are surrounded by lakes and how it can change a municipality’s outlook on fireworks, compared with more urban areas where homes are closer together.

“Each situation is unique in terms of the frequency of the fireworks,” Randall said this week. “Certainly questions have been posed in terms of what are the animals’ ability to adapt to these, such as: If they hear them on a regular basis, do they become more aware of it? Or how do you make the animals more resilient to [fireworks] if it is going to be a known problem?”

A “one-size-fits-all” approach may be difficult when it comes to placing restrictions on fireworks, Randall said, because of the different animals’ tolerance thresholds toward fireworks.

“It’s just a hard thing to grasp,” Randall said.

Several municipalities throughout Maine did not wish to regulate fireworks when they first became legal, Randall said, are now looking into restrictions after learning the effects fireworks can have on people and the environment.

More restrictions needed

State law does not place restrictions on how far fireworks can be set off from farm animals, said State Fire Marshal Joe Thomas.

Bisson and Sutherland are calling for restricting the use of fireworks between a quarter-mile and a half-mile from barns and equine pastures. Bisson said fireworks shot a half-mile away do not seem to bother her livestock.

“It was quite a topic of discussion in the last legislative session,” Thomas said, recalling Bisson’s complaint earlier this year about her animals getting sick and trampled in reaction to fireworks.

Sutherland speculates that the fireworks getting ignited above her property are illegal in Maine, and claims they sometimes are set off at 3 a.m., five hours past the statewide curfew.

According to Maine law, fireworks may be used between the hours of 9 a.m. and 10 p.m., any day of the year, except on the July 4, Dec. 31, and on the weekends until 12:30 a.m., immediately before and after the holidays.

The law also prohibits the use of missile-type rockets, helicopters, aerial spinners, skyrockets and bottle rockets.

Considered

This past spring, the Legislature considered a bill that would repeal the fireworks law, and included several additional restrictions, such as requiring municipal open-burning permits to shoot off fireworks and banning their use within one mile of fields containing livestock.

“As the work session went along, it wasn’t just horses; it was domestic animals, to any kind of livestock,” Thomas said.

None of the bills presented to Augusta in April passed, he said, but two of them are being carried over to the next session. An additional bill, seeking an outright ban on fireworks, will be reconsidered by the Legislature in January, Thomas said.