WICOMICO COUNTY, Md. – Wicomico County Council is moving forward with a potential ban on dissolved air flotation (DAF) tanks within County lines. During Tuesday night’s Council meeting, six of the seven council members voted to propose a legislative ban.

“Essentially, there was sort of three options that we had the opportunity to explore,” said Council member Bill McCain. “The first of which would be simply banning DAF storage tanks in the county. The other options would be either limiting them to industrial zones or limiting it to the A1 zone, but with sort of a laundry list of stipulations.”

Now, legislation that would allow the ban is being written up for the Council to review and eventually vote on. McCain says if the legislation is passed, it would not affect farmers’ abilities to use DAF material on their farms. “This legislation does not affect the implementation of DAF being put on fields. It only address the issue of storage, which is a local legislative issue for counties to decide,” he said.

Council president John Cannon says as the County has been grappling with this issue for some time, compromise is the end goal. “The real idea is to make sure that we have the best system in place in Wicomico County, whereby it benefits the industry as a whole, and the surrounding community. We need to find some type of compromise that will work,” he said.

Cannon also tells 47 ABC the Council is looking at other options in case they can’t actually legally ban the tanks. That includes legislation that would restrict the tanks to industrially zoned land. “If we have to move towards anaerobic digesters with closed systems, that might be the best and most beneficial system for everybody,” said Cannon.