Dave Collins is raising a stink about the smell of his rural community.
Collins lives in Dalmeny, Sask., a small farming community near Saskatoon. He is suing his rural municipality over the smell from local farms.
Collins moved to Dalmeny in 1995 and said in the last two years a dairy farm and some poultry operations have ruined his way of life.
“I can’t use my property in summertime. I can’t sit in my back yard. It smells too bad. And because of a change in law in 1996, I can’t even sue the people who are wrecking my way of life,” he said.
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“So I’m suing the municipality that is allowing these (livestock operations) to expand. I don’t blame the farmer. He’s just doing what the law says he can. I blame the regulator who tells him he can do it.”
When Collins moved to Dalmeny, he said the nearby dairy farm had fewer cattle than it has today.
Ed Hobday is the reeve of the Rural Municipality of Corman Park, the council named in Collins’s lawsuit filed Nov. 28.
“The dairy has had the right to be at 299 animal units since we brought in the bylaw in 1983,” Hobday said. “The farms pre-date us even having a bylaw and thus they were grandfathered in. The dairy didn’t expand. It simply returned to its previous size and within its operating limit.”
Collins appeared before the Corman Park council last summer and asked it to pay for an air conditioner and air “purification” system for his home.
Hobday said the council chose not to pay.
“I understand he is suing the council for $5,000 so that he can install the air conditioning,” said the reeve.
Bill Henley, a provincial agriculture livestock specialist for the region, said the local dairy farm once spread manure too close to the community last year, but has since moved to effluent injection and has “cleaned up and made an effort to do everything up to standards.”
He said the province investigated Collins’s complaints and found that local farms are acting within the provincial guidelines.
Collins has not taken the case to the Agricultural Operations Review Board because he feels it is made up of farmers who would side against him.
Collins and the municipality are scheduled to be in Saskatoon provincial court Dec. 20.
