Tamay Alpander says she’s not the type to get involved in town politics. She’s too busy taking care of the retired thoroughbreds she keeps on her farm in Shapleigh.

But each year around the Fourth of July, that requires extra work — turning on fans, blasting the radio, plugging the horses’ ears — all in an effort to block the noise from a neighbor’s fireworks display that she said sends the animals running in circles and whinnying, often damaging the walls of their barn and injuring themselves in the process.

“It sounds like the firing squad,” she said. “It just goes on and on and on.”

Last year, one of her horses got sick around Mother’s Day. Worried that the stress from the fireworks might do him in, Alpander said, she went to her neighbor to see if he might hold off on the celebratory booms that year. But aside from giving her a heads up about when they would be happening, he wouldn’t budge.

“I’m sorry, it’s a free country,” David Bourque said last week. He’s always held a party at his house around the Fourth of July, followed by a fireworks display that’s come to attract hundreds of people. “It lasts maybe 30, 35 minutes. Is it loud? Absolutely, but at the end of the day, it’s done.”

Alpander turned to town officials to see if there was anything else she could do to prevent it and was told her only option would be trying to get an ordinance passed to restrict the use of consumer fireworks in town.

After collecting signatures at the transfer station, she got a question on the warrant at the March town meeting to require a permit for setting off fireworks and to prohibit them within a mile of livestock that’s registered with the town. By a raise of hands among the 60-some people who attended, it passed.

Now, Bourque is using the same process to try to get the ordinance repealed. He’s been collecting signatures and says he has more than the 140 needed to put the question back out to voters before next summer. He says most people he’s talked to weren’t aware of the vote at the town meeting, and many are just as upset as he is.

“She ruined it for everybody,” he said.

LOCAL LAWS  

Since Maine lawmakers passed a bill in 2011 legalizing the use and sale of consumer fireworks in the state, more than 100 towns and cities have responded by adopting ordinances prohibiting or restricting them.

Some only allow them around certain holidays or in certain parts of town, and at least a couple specifically mention livestock, with Monmouth prohibiting them within 250 feet and Calais within 1,500 feet — significantly less than the mile buffer established in Shapleigh’s ordinance, which punishes violators with a fine of $500-$2,500.

Bourque, who lives about half-mile drive from Alpander, says prohibiting fireworks “within a mile of a chicken” in a rural town like Shapleigh is essentially an all-out ban.

But the restriction only applies to livestock whose owners choose to register with the town out of concern about the effect fireworks might have on their animals. Shapleigh Town Administrator Michelle Rumney said, so far, only five have done so.

State legislators have considered multiple proposals to restrict fireworks around livestock, but those efforts seem to have stalled. A 2022 bill to limit the decibel level of fireworks near working farms was deemed it too difficult to enforce, and lawmakers instead passed a resolve to form a stakeholder group to study the impacts of consumer fireworks use.

According to a March report by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, the group made two recommendations in 2023 — to create a form for law enforcement officers to document fireworks violations, including incidents involving animals, and to designate livestock zones where consumer fireworks are prohibited — but the Legislature has yet to act on them.

A DIVISIVE ISSUE

Alpander said she found out just how polarizing fireworks are when she was out collecting signatures. While there were some people who had no interest in her petition, others grabbed her hand to sign it as fast as they could.

“There were people who were like, ‘Every time the fireworks go off, my dogs go crazy,'” she said.

Her horse that was sick last year has since died, but she still has eight others to worry about, not to mention the race horses she boards in New York because she can’t risk them hurting themselves here.

People have asked her why she doesn’t just move the horses for the night of the fireworks, but she says that getting an old horse on a trailer can cause significant stress, too.

A jockey, Alpander said she should be racing right now to earn the money that supports the nonprofit farm she’s owned since 2000, but instead will stick around for the next few weeks, in case the ordinance isn’t obeyed or enforced.

“I have to drop everything. It’s messing with my livelihood,” she said.

Though, she acknowledged, “I’m messing with his big party.”

Bourque said last week that he didn’t know yet whether he’d hold a party this year, but he still plans to put on a fireworks show — not at his house but in what he calls “international waters,” over a lake between Shapleigh and Acton, though he wouldn’t say exactly where.

Bourque said he understands why people would want to put a limit on fireworks so they’re not going off all the time, but he’s worried that this ordinance is just the beginning of the town putting more restrictions on things people enjoy. He’s heard there’s an effort underway to prohibit target shooting on private property, too.

“I call it Shapachusetts,” said Bourque, referring to the state he’s from originally, though he’s lived in Maine for almost 40 years. “They’re all coming up here, and they’re trying to change the rules.”

Although he’ll comply with the fireworks ordinance this year, he said he doesn’t expect others will bother.

“It’s going to be happening everywhere, no matter what,” he said.