Clean Air?

[cowman]

Every month or so I have business in downtown Calgary for a couple of hours. Now it always turns out I have to park about ten blocks from where I'm going. So I walk it. Now I am not allergic to anything but bees. No asthma or things like that. But by the time I get out of there my eyes are pouring and I am all choked up and my head is pounding! I can sit in a room with twenty guys smoking and never have a problem or spend a whole day at a lease where they are flaring.
I could never work or live in downtown Calgary! How people can breathe that crap day after day is beyond me. Does anyone else find they have this problem?

[countryguy]

Can't say I have trouble breathing,just get a sick to my stomach,get me the hell out of here kind of feeling whenever I enter city limits.

[Deb]

That view of Calgary as you approach it is gross. A yellow haze of car exhaust. I feel so grateful heading home. I usually stay inside whatever hotel the meeting is at. I think the air might be filtered and if I'm high up enough the ground level ozone won't get to me.

[gopher]

If you folks think the air in Calgary is bad then you need to walk a mile in my shoes. About 2 years ago our fine community minded appeal board approved a 20,000 head feedlot 1/4 mile from our farm. That makes 7 large ILO's with in a 3 mile radius. This area is called feedlot alley and beleive me the air in Calgary smells like a rose!!

[cowman]

I don't think the air in Calgary smells all that bad...maybe a little bit like exhaust. It just makes me sick is all. By the time I get back to my truck the tears are just running down my face. I guess it's just a case of the country bumpkin goes to town!!! I don't blame you for not wanting to be beside a ILO. I'll just bet the flies are a tad thick? I bet the old barbeque can be a challenge?
The contrasts of down town Calgary are quite an eyeopener. If you are there right at noon all the office people are streaming out to the little classy cafes and restaurants. A block down the homeless are all lined up at the soup kitchen(The Mustard Seed) and the hookers are out plying the noon trade. I was quite disgusted to see one little girl there who couldn't have been a day over 12. Where in the hell are the cops? Does Tim Hortons do a brisk business at noon or what?

[cakadu]

Gopher, perhaps you'd like to add your comments to the benchmarking thread. We need to hear from more people such as yourself who have the other side of the story and don't see much in the way of benefit.

[Deb]

I wonder if I know you, Gopher, do you live near the Turin end or the Monarch end of Feedlot Alley?

Anyway, Calgary doesn't smell taht much different because those toxic compounds are mostly odourless. Manure on the other hand, little particles of poop, certainly do. My husband told me to get up at a meeting and say, "If I wouldn't want to eat shit, why would I want to breath it into my lungs?" So I did.

Gopher, what did you think of that Klapstein committee which made recommendations for the new livestock act which removes the democratic public process? The committee went around the province "collecting input" from the public and from various stakeholders. They were all involved in the livestock feeding and/or finished beef export business. How unbiased of them, eh?

[cowman]

Now when you say they were all involved in the feedlot business are you talking about the people giving the input or the ones hearing it? For most Albertans(exempting feedlot alley residents) what we are talking about here is hog barns. And I think this problem can be solved. Injection of liquid manure seems like a viable solution. We get the benefits of a hog barn without the biggest problem(stink).
And lets not underestimate the benefits...these barns make big bucks! And those bucks go back into the local economy! Like, we have so many opportunities knocking on the door??
We need to be able to strike a happy medium for growth and quality of life!

[gopher]

Deb - I'm not sure we have met but it is very possible because I have attended or spoke at several appeal hearings which you seem to be familiar with. Yes, I farm on the west end of feedlot alley and as a matter of interest I counted the ILO'S that are within a 3 mile radius of home and came up with the following: 7 major feedlots, 3 large dairys, 3 corporate type hog operations and 4 cow/calf outfits ( one of them being mine ).
My opinion of the Klapstein committee is it was formed to provide Mr klein with an excuse to say he went to the public for information. That was a very well controlled exercise in public relations to give some form of credibility to the new CFO regulations, which in my opinion are only guidelines that are not enforceable . This has been the problem with ILO approvals in the past. Conditions have been placed on permits at appeal hearings and once the approval has been granted the conditions are ignored because the operaters know that nobody is going to check up on them. Example - if an applicant hasn't the land base for manure disposal, he comes to the appeal hearing armed with letters saying that he can put manure on other land and once the permit is issued the "other land" is to expensive to haul to so it gets spread close to home! Another example - separation distances can be manipulated in the new guidelines as in the past. Take an existing 25000 head feedlot which is built in the south west corner of a 1/4 section. Now this operator wants to expand and he also owns the south east 1/4 but he can't expand his existing feedlot because the minimum separation distance can't be met. So what he can do is apply for a " new feedlot " located in the south east 1/4 adjacent to the existing feedlot and he now has a 50000 head feedlot with only a minimun separation distance required for 25000 head! Thats right -- it got approved as two separate feedlots.
cakadu - Your right about benchmarking. It is hard to measure something when there's no starting point. There presently is a study group in the Lethbridge area trying to establish a benchmark for the Oldman river basin. There are some very qualified people working on this and I know some of them personally. They are coming up with some good data but what up sets me is some of the information they are finding will never be made public. You see - when these fellows prepare their papers, before they can be made public the information has to go to the " ministers " office and this is where some " papers " remain. The information that does get released is usually "toned " down as it may have been politically sensitive!
I agree with many of the comments made about manure disposal on the land provided it is done in line with good soil samples however I can get all fired up about what really happens regarding manure disposal in feedlot alley and how many of us are drinking it !! That is another subject and I've said my two bits worth for today. Have a good Easter !

[cakadu]

Gopher, glad to have your input. It helps to get the other perspective because not everyone thinks these are a good thing. It all works in theory, the manure spreading, separation distance etc., but we all know how good theory is. As long as no one is undertaking effective policing, these sorts of things will continue to happen. I can understand and appreciate what a valuable resource all that manure is, but it has to be handled properly. How effective do you see these environmental farm plans being when they may point to these feedlots, piggeries etc. having to do major (translating into big bucks) improvements to their properties? Without the proper monitoring of these plans, of what use are they? You can put a plan in place, just like the legislation that you have pointed out, but there are always loopholes, sometimes big enough to run the manure spreader through.

Your points about the group doing the Old Man River basin are valid and is precisely why the government CANNOT legislate and police and/or promote. It isn't in their best interests, which subsequently ends up not being in ours either.

I would be interested in finding out more about this group - what information could you provide?

[Muttley]

As I do not live near any intensive livestock operations I can only imagine the smell. What my question is, is this.
Where should all these type of operations go? As far as I think there is no place that does not have a population of people that it would effect. We all want the economic spin off's so what do we do?

[cakadu]

Muttley, I may be wrong, but I don't think it's always a matter of people don't want them, it sometimes is a matter of too far away from markets. Up in northern Alberta there is plenty of space and likely not too much in the way of neighbors. Problem with going all the way up there is that the costs become a major factor. What do some of the rest of you think?

Although, if as cowman says, his pork friend makes $14,000/month you'd think they could afford a little in the way of trucking. ;-)

[gopher]

cakadu - a contact person for the group doing the water shed study would be Brent Paterson of Alta Agriculture located at the Lethbridge Research Station - 5401 1st Ave So - Lethbridge Alberta. Ph 403 -381 -5237. Sorry, their web site seems to be down today. You could try them in a day or two at www.gov.ab.ca/directory
With regards to a management plan for these ILO's, it would help only if the conditions in the plan can be enforced. Areas like fly control, dust control and to some degree odour would be improved.
Muttley - I'm not totally against ILO's because they do have a large economic impact on this area, however they can be constructed in areas where they have minimal impact on neighbours and the environment. In this area known as feedlot alley which is an area approx. 40 miles long and 7 or 8 miles wide mostly located on the north bank of the Oldman River is also a major irrigation district. This is the reason why the ILO's are located here because they have a good water source and lots of silage is grown here. If you drive the length of feedlot alley there is an ILO on nearly every 1/4 sec - at the last count there was 357 of them. Now my question is this - Why can't these ILO's build outside of the irrigated area and pipe there water to the location similiar to what many villages and towns do? It seems to me that would provide better options to locate ILO's in areas where greater separations could be provided and more environmental friendly sites could be found.

[Muttley]

I hear opposition to hog barns all the time. Was there much if any opposition to starting all this "feedlot alley" if so what?
I realize smell and bugs must be awful, if it is why doesn't more people just sell this expensive land and move?
In Sk. I am allways hearing urban residents complaining of the smell of hog barns, yet many barns were there before the people took up residency, is this the case with some feedlot's as well?
Don't get me wrong on all this, if I lived by some I may well be upset also, but from the outside looking in I would like to see more development in Sk.

[cowman]

Linda: My Dutch neighbor would be a classic example of what is happening in ILO's. He intends to take his 250 farrow to finish operation and turn it into a 1000 head farrowing barn. That way he isn't expanding just changing the focus of his production. Then he intends to build a feeder barn in a less unfriendly area. He tells me a lot of the pigs being killed at the Red Deer plant are from eastern Sask. and Manitoba. Why not move the whole operation? He has a young family and doesn't want to live out in the boonies.
When you really consider the price of land close to the Calgary/Edmonton highway the only thing that makes any kind of sense,from an economical perspective, is an ILO. It is dumb to run cows on $2500/acre land. The only other option is subdivision for the horsey set!