Concerns about damage to ecologically sensitive wildlife areas and insufficient information and public involvement were heard about intensive livestock operations at a meeting in Quill Lake, Sask., May 2.
The Rural Municipality of Lakeside’s hog development committee is working with Big Sky Pork, to look at a five-barn 5,000-sow project.
The next step for the project, first proposed in 2001, will be soil and water quality tests to determine the suitability of these sites, said Lakeside administrator Judy Kanak.
She said about 150 attended the informational meeting, called after a petition carrying the signatures of 35 ratepayers from the Quill Lake and Watson areas asked to discuss concerns.
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Presented to council by the Concerned Citizens Coalition, the petition called for a discussion on the barns’ effects on water quality, roadways and human health, concerns over decreased land values from a negative quality of life and liability to the community in the event of environmental damage.
The coalition plans to keep these issues before council and is seeking legal advice on its next steps, said coalition member and Watson farmer Brian Shewchuk.
He said the local community needs to be included in project planning and development, while council needs more time to explore manure management options like digesters used in Europe and invite project proposals from other developers.
He called the region “a catch basin” that attracts bird watchers and hunters each year. It already has three large hog barns, run by a farmer, a Hutterite colony and Big Sky.
“We feel it’s an environmentally and ecologically sensitive area.”
Shewchuk is particularly troubled by the provincial government’s financial investment in such ILOs and its responsibilities in promotion, regulation and monitoring.
