Clean Air?

[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!

[Deb]

Cowman, I meant the Klapstein committee was made up of people with a vested interest in the livestock industry.

I agree with everything Gopher said. Gopher are you aware of the truckwash fiasco near Kipp? After breaking all kinds of laws, letting liquid manure run under the road and into the neighbor's land, pumping onto the same fields Fridays after 4:30 PM when he knew the gov't employees get off for the weekend, and pumping at night onto the back fields, and having the health region shut them down, NRCB has given them approval to enlarge their non-engineered lagoon and continue washing trucks (which he was doing anyway in secret in spite of the health region according to someone who overheard one of the employees). The NRCB said they weren't going to take into account the truck wash's "past history". The one neighbour who complained and had spent $15,000 of his own money on lawyers the past year said to the NRCB that he understood how people like Weibo Ludwig could get so frustrated after following the proper procedure and still get screwed, that he'd want to go blow up an oil pump or whatever. For this, the NRCB had the RCMP arrest the neighbour to the truckwash was arrested last Thursday I think it was, and fingerprinted. If he wasn't mad before, he's sick with rage now but has decided to sell his place because the "stink" literally and figurtively, will never go away.

If anyone is interested, there is a one-day conference in Red Deer on April 12th and the invitation says, "If you are concerned with the Provincial Government takeover of Confined Feeding Operation in Alberta, then please join us."

The speakers will be: Lisa Bechthold, Roger Epp (political science prof and editor of Writing Off the Rural West; Andrew Nikiforuk (wrote the Weibo Ludwig and oil industry book); Brian Kennedy (former Alb Agr ILO engineer); Dr. Paul Lewis (retired entomology prof and S.A. Env. Group president); Brian Mason (ND part; Ken Nicol (head of AB Liberal Party); Brian Bietz (NRCB rep, CFO approvals).

Registration is $30 and for more info call Sue Pearson at 403-347-3299 or Lisa Bechthold at 403-867-2999.

[rodbradshaw]

The conference Red Deer might be good if it was scientifically based but it is just going to be a bitch session. If people had used some common sense and not had everyone for 10-20 miles appealing developements the municipalities would still be in control.
For example a development permit was turned down (later approved with unrealistic conditions)for a weaner barn to be built next door to the worlds largest petrochemical plant. The farmer had a section of land and the barn was to be built in the middle of the section. Even with all the proper planning farmers were opposing it.

This group is going to rally everyone to their cause and then reel in horror when the pressure is turned up and their so called family farm is reclassified as a CFO (remember two dairy cows is a CFO)and they don't meet the criteria and have to quite farming. Remember there are more teachers in the government caucus than their are farmers and rural issues will not be decided by level headed discussion. Beware of who you go to bed with as they may not be there to support you and keep you warm!
The other thing that I have against this group is the fact that they oppose a development because of its ownership. Those pigs are Canadian, they are going to be raised by Canadian workers, fed Canadian grain and they are going to pay Canadian taxes, They are going to be slaughtered in Canada and exported to foreign countries and help our balance of trade. What is the difference to a similar sized development that is being done in three or four phases in the same area?

If this group succeeds it will mean we might as well pack our bags and sell to the horsey set as cowman calls them.

[cakadu]

We've been told that these CFO's are safe, environmentally friendly etc. etc. without there being any benchmarking/scientific evidence to tell us if they in fact are safe, so why should going and listening to this group be any different?

It would be interesting to hear what they have to say and then balance it against the "pro" viewpoint. I would like to think that people in the audience, myself included, would be astute enough to know manure when they heard it. How do we know what their message is, unless we actually go and hear it. We've certainly been hearing enough about the other side.

As in all things, let people hear the information and let them decide what they'll believe and won't believe.

[cowman]

I am sure it will be a great little bash the government sort of thing and yes Linda it will probably be quite informative. I guess my question is "What's the point?". The dirty deed is done. The government was quite clear that it intended to have a lot more pig barns in this province. And it brought in the legislation to allow this to happen.Do you really believe they care about a bunch of "green activists"??? Better to keep your $30 and donate it to "Save the Rainforest".
Now as in anything, there is how it is supposed to work in theory and how it really works. You can be assured that there will be no pig barns near Calgary, Edmonton or within 10 miles of any MLAs home. Or if you have a neighbor who has some pull or influence you are safe. But Foremost? Hardisty? I would suggest to you that is the place to have them? And we hear a lot of bitching about feedlot alley but really isn't that a good place to build it? Would you rather have the feedlots lining the Edmonton/Calgary corridor? Do you think that would ever happen? Now according to the act, in theory it could happen...but it won't!

[Deb]

I can almost guarantee that the "green activists" will be mostly people struggling to keep their small family farms and others will be people who want to keep their quality of life. They are the kind of people who are being negatively affected by someone else's private property rights! And don't say the livestock indistry has the Code of Practice and Minimum Distance Separation. When you have 5 or 6 feedlots and hog cesspools surrounding you at the MDS, MDS means didly squat. When your well that was fine for decades suddenly is full of E-coli a few years after an ILO moves in and plasters the land with manure, what can you do? They'll just say you can't prove it was the overapplication of manure.