KELVINGTON, Sask. – Jim Little dryly comments there has been a lot of controversy over proposals to build huge hog barns near this northeastern Saskatchewan town.
As administrator of the Rural Municipality of Sasman, he has been at public meetings and RM council meetings the past year dealing with the development.
“A lot of people are opposed to it and a lot of people are for it,” he said.
While one of three proposed 8,000-head hog barns was turned down because of water pollution concerns, two other barns have been approved by the RM and could be built this spring.
Read Also
Land crash warning rejected
A technical analyst believes that Saskatchewan land values could be due for a correction, but land owners and FCC say supply/demand fundamentals drive land prices – not mathematical models
Sandy Lowndes and Kim Irving are among a group of people that opposes the barns. Most of the members prefer anonymity because of concerns about business and personal retribution in their local area, said Lowndes.
“I got involved because someone wanted to put a pig barn on Duck Creek next to me,” she said.
She helped collect 150 names on a petition opposing the first development. The petition was taken to an RM council meeting about 10 months ago and helped defeat that proposal.
“We couldn’t leave the petition with the council because of threats to people.”
Retaliation feared
Little said the group did not table its petition at the meeting because they said they thought there might be retaliation. And while he never heard any threats against them directly, he did hear of their accusations.
Last week Lowndes’ group had its lawyer send a letter to the province’s environment department asking for an independent environmental impact study of the two proposed barns. It is backing up that request with a new petition listing 131 names collected from just one weekend of activity. They expect an answer early in February from the department.
The group fears the hog barns’ manure storage and distribution system will lower water quality in the area. The problem is the volume of manure produced by each barn. The plans are to have 8,000 hogs finished in each barn three times a year – so manure will be produced by 48,000 animals. It will be liquefied and stored in clay-lined lagoons that are pumped out once a year. This slurry is then injected into the ground by hoses in a technology that comes from the southern United States. The environmental group says lagoons could leak, hoses break and one member said she saw the injected slurry at another hog barn site bubbling up from soil rather than disappearing.
The group points to the fact the RM of Sasman community well is three kilometres away from the proposed two barns. Lowndes is also curious as to why a lakeside cottage she owns requires a better sewage disposal system by law than does the 8,000-hog barn.
Environmental concerns got the group going. Then members began questioning the whole concept of huge hog barns.
They say other barn developments employ about two people each so there’s not much job creation. They also say there are more economic benefits from the tourists and hunters drawn by the area’s unpolluted lakes.
The project developer, Kelvington Super Swine, said there will be trucking work, hog barn staff plus feed grain sales to benefit the area. Florian Possberg who is managing the project for the group said the Kelvington barns will be the finishing area for the hogs produced in two other barns south of Lintlaw. He said he is not aware of any personal threats toward the environmental group and said the most pressure has been on the RM council and reeve who have been “hounded” on the issue.
“It’s a volunteer job and they’re trying to balance both sides.”
Possberg said the project is following the provincial guidelines on large hog operations and manure can’t be equated with pulp mill waste.
Cheap fertilizer
“It really bewilders me that people are concerned about it as a pollutant” when it has value as a cheap fertilizer. He said the Kelvington project will spread the manure over 8,000 acres of land so it is a different situation than Holland or North Carolina – “a difference of day and night.”
Possberg also said the project will require 350,000 to 400,000 bushels of feed grain a year. Volume of grain produced in the area, plus the lack of competition for labor, caused the project to be located in this area, he said.
But Lowndes counters: “One farmer raising 8,000 hogs is less good for a rural community than 100 farmers raising 800 each.
“We are not against raising three million pigs in Saskatchewan,” said Lowndes. “It should not be done by corporations – it should be farmers. …
“You just have to keep asking yourself why they are so persistent in this delicate ecosystem. If Kelvington stops these barns, it sets a precedent. Then other communities can do it.”
