A divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court has sided with a farmer in a battle over how to handle pig poop.

In a majority ruling issued Thursday, Justice Max Baer deep-sixed regulations farmer Scott Sponenberg’s township tried to impose on Sponenberg’s proposal to raise 4,800 pigs on his property.

The regulations Sponenberg challenged required him to provide legally binding assurances that manure handling operations for the pigs would have no adverse impacts on his neighbors.

By adverse impacts, officials in Montour Township, Columbia County, meant ground and surface water contamination, reduction in groundwater supplies, noise, odors, dust and truck traffic.

Sponenberg appealed to the state’s highest court after a Commonwealth Court panel ruled the township could make Sponenberg obey those regulations.

Baer reached the opposite conclusion. He found the township overstepped its reach because its adverse impact rules are more strict than the requirements of the state’s Nutrient Management Act, which regulates the handling of manure generated on farms.

Local governments are barred by law from imposing tighter controls than those set by the NMA, Baer concluded. He noted that the state act does not contain the adverse impact regulations that are set in the Montour Township ordinance.

The Sponenberg case is a bit complicated because his hog operation would be too small to have to file a plan for manure handling under the NMA. Larger-scale, higher-intensity animal raising operations are mandated by the act to file such plans, but they are “costly and burdensome” and so are only voluntary for smaller farms, Baer noted.

Sponenberg elected not to file a manure handling plan, but he still is protected by the NMA’s prohibition against local municipalities imposing stricter regulations than the state, Baer found.

Justice Kevin M. Dougherty filed a dissenting opinion, saying he would have upheld the Commonwealth Court’s decision.

Dougherty argued that the Supreme Court’s majority ruling leaves farms the size of Sponenberg’s – which are the majority in Pennsylvania – “outside of any regulation” regarding the handling of manure. That, he contended, is “untenable.”

The Legislature didn’t intend to “spare smaller farms from all nutrient management regulation,” Dougherty wrote. “In my view, the (Montour Township) ordinance’s adverse impact requirement does not pose an obstacle to this purpose.”