BURR, Sask. – Farmers in this central Saskatchewan area are voting on a zoning bylaw that could effectively halt the building of any large livestock operations.
The rural municipality of Wolverine, which is home to a number of massive hog barns already, wants to amend its regulations to strictly control intensive livestock operations. Ratepayers can vote for or against the proposal in the week of June 3-7.
The restrictions are so onerous they will prevent local hog producer Florian Possberg from building four more hog barns and will stop other livestock producers from expanding, he said.
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“They’re hitting some innocent bystanders, which is unfortunate,” said Possberg, who assumes the proposed changes are intended to stymie his building plans. Possberg also operates the other barns in the municipality.
The changes would not affect small livestock operations, but anything with more than the equivalent of 300 cows will have to locate farther away from local homes than under the present bylaw.
A proposed 300-cow operation would have to be at least 1,300 feet from the nearest home, but that will be raised to 5,280 feet (one mile) if the changes pass.
For a 900-animal unit, which is the size of Possberg’s proposal, there could be no homes for at least two miles in all directions. The present bylaw allows an operation that size to be half a mile from any human dwelling.
Ten miles apart
The amendment also would not allow any large livestock operations to be within 10 miles (16 kilometres) of each other, which in an 18-mile long and wide RM (29 km) with existing operations would make any such new project impossible, Possberg said.
Reeve Roy Powell said neither he nor any member of council will comment on the proposed changes until after council votes on it.
But he said the council decided to allow RM residents to vote on the bylaw because “the ratepayers are sort of split on it.”
An advertisement in the local newspaper says the bylaw changes are meant to lower the danger of pollution from livestock operations.
But Possberg said his proposed barns will be environmentally safe and “somebody’s making some arbitrary rules here, and it’s probably not based on science or pollution.”
