Comeuppance

This farmer's neighbors are going to be kicking themselves next year the first time the wind blows the wrong way:

Complaints kill shooting range, pigs coming now

Sunday, September 11, 2005
By Brian David, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On the first day of August, Tom Belsterling saw his skeet-shooting business blown right out of the sky.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined that day to hear his appeal of a May 2003 decision by the New Sewickley zoning hearing board. The board had ruled Belsterling's skeet range illegal, and the decision had been upheld at every level of county and state court.

On the first day of September, lacking the ability to make further appeals, Belsterling went for a lack of appeal instead: He bought some pigs.

If he can't fill the air with buckshot and clay, he'll fill it with an odor. And neighbors who had angered him with their blunt objections to the noise of shotguns cannot complain; pig farming is absolutely allowed under the township's zoning ordinance.

"It's an agricultural activity, so go to it, I guess," said Dennis Goehring, chairman of the New Sewickley supervisors.

{Smirk}