Troy, MI Right to Farm: Farm Nuisance Protection (2026)

Section 12.06 of the Zoning Ordinance sets Environmental Performance Standards that every use in the City must meet, and subsection B.4 addresses odors: any condition or operation producing odors intense enough to be detrimental to public health and welfare, or that unreasonably interferes with the public's comfort, must be removed, stopped, or modified until the odor is gone. That command is written broadly enough to reach nearly any commercial or industrial use, but the same sentence immediately narrows it: the requirement 'is not intended to interfere with the operation of a farm, as defined by this Ordinance, which is lawful pursuant to the Michigan Right to Farm Act, as amended.' In practice, this means a farm operating lawfully under the state Right to Farm Act and its Generally Accepted Agricultural and Management Practices cannot be forced by Troy's zoning code to abate odors that are a normal incident of that farm's operation, even though a factory, kennel, or other business generating the same intensity of odor would be in violation.

The exemption is limited to the definition of 'farm' used elsewhere in the Zoning Ordinance and does not extend blanket immunity from every other environmental performance standard in Section 12.06, such as airborne emissions, dust, or hazardous substance handling, which still apply regardless of Right to Farm status.