Manure bylaw still in bad odour

It’s back to the drawing board for the municipality’s residential livestock bylaw.

After four years of consultation, consultant fees and committee meetings, the council heard last week they still didn’t have it quite right. “What about 4-H projects?” asked Gilberte Doelle of Gilbert’s Cove. “We are a rural area, not like Halifax where kids have to rent animals to do their projects.”

Warden Jim Thurber said the Planning Advisory Committee will look at the 4-H issue and all the other objections and questions they heard and then consider changes to the draft bylaw. “That might be a case of just adding a line that 4-H projects are exempt from the bylaw,” said Thurber. “This is a draft and nothing is written in stone. We want to listen to your comments and we want to get it right. We won’t totally satisfy everyone, but hopefully we won’t cause too much pain for anyone either.”

The Residential Livestock Areas Land Use Bylaw is intended to designate areas of the municipality as residential and prevent new commercial farms setting up in those areas.

Throughout the meetings speakers referred to these areas as ‘grey areas’ because they were shaded that way on the display maps.

Deputy warden Jimmy MacAlpine acknowledged that the bylaw grew out of concern about mink farms. “But the PAC felt we couldn’t just pick on one farming industry,” said MacAlpine. “We decided since it was the manure that was causing the problem we would look at all manure-based farming – anything that produces manure. There aren’t large hog operations here but there could be in the future or poultry operations.”

Thurber added that the bylaw does not affect farming outside the grey areas. “What we’re saying to people is that if you build a house in the country, don’t come crying to council – this is a way of life, this is the kind of business that takes place.”

Most of the two-dozen people who showed up for the meetings (in Digby on Tuesday, March 13 and in Weymouth on Thursday, March 15) were small farmers or supporters of the small farm. Many complained the draft is too broad. “Why have you created such a broad bylaw when the issue was mink farming?” asked Andy Moir. “If mink farming is the problem, deal with mink farming. If something else becomes a problem, deal with that then. “How many chickens or goats people had was never a problem. Since Freeport was settled in 1770, people have always had animals and it was never a problem ever.”

Doelle wonders if her children will be able to farm in Gilbert’s Cove. She also wonders if this bylaw will stifle innovation in the farming industry. “The richest farmers will be the most innovative. You have to give them the flexibility to do something weird, something not traditional. No one is going to be innovative, no one is going to try anything new in Digby if all they can have is one cow.”

Doelle says the bylaw focuses too much on where people are farming instead of how they are farming. “It’s all about how you do it, regulate the handling of the manure, how it is used,” she suggests. “I use more manure in my vegetable operation than comes out of my livestock operation. Is your operation creating a problem or not? The regulations should be about smell or water sources.”

No one at either meeting complained about mink farming but Ann Lewis left the Weymouth meeting only a few minutes into the discussion when she realized she doesn’t live in one of the grey areas. “Why would I stay when the bylaw isn’t going to do anything about mink farming where I live?” says Lewis.

She too had hoped the bylaw would be more about farming practices. Specifically she hoped the bylaw would require farmers to clean up manure and leftover food every other day, to surround their farms with special steel mink fences and to tattoo the mink. “I guess the rest of the municipality (outside the grey areas) doesn’t count,” she says. “That’s why people don’t come to these meetings, they have given up.”

All existing farms would be exempt from the bylaw – that is any established farm that already houses more animals than the bylaw allows will be able to continue to exceed the bylaws and even expand.

One speaker at the Weymouth meeting expressed concern about the bylaw’s effect on new farmers. “What if they don’t exceed the limit when the bylaw comes into effect but are in the growth phase? That means a lot of new entrants would be trapped.”

The PAC pledged to examine that issue and whether farmers could count the acreage of neighboring lots they own or lease.

The committee still welcomes written submissions for the next few weeks. Once they finish their review of all the comments, they plan to post the new draft and maps on the municipality’s website and copies will available as always at the municipal offices.

Thurber says they may hold another round of public consultation if they decide to make significant changes to the bylaw.