By Larry Powell
Hogwatch Manitoba says a
large pig barn in the RM of Yellowhead in the southwest, has been operating
illegally since last year.
 |
This is the barn in question, 5k east of the village of Strathclair.
Photo by Larry Powell. |
Ruth Pryzer presented Hogwatch’s
case to the Yellowhead council
this week. She claimed the barn owner, Wim
Verbruggen, misled
the local government when he applied for a building permit
early
last year.
She says the barn he built
was three thousand square feet bigger than he said it would be. And it houses
many more animals than
the fewer than 300 he claimed it would. The Planning Act
which existed at the time, required that a barn such as the one now up
and
running, have both a “conditional use” hearing and a technical review.
Neither of these actually took place.
The lack of a hearing meant there was no chance for
anyone in the area to express concerns or perhaps of even finding out about it,
beforehand! No technical review meant a group of experts had no chance of
examining the project, in detail.
The Hogwatch
submission states, “The applicant (Verbruggen)
had given the RM verbal assurances that
the expansion would not require an application for a conditional use permit.
Ms. Gapka
(the RM’s CAO) said,
because the Municipality operates on ‘the honour system and did not have the staffing resources and
expertise to verify the accuracy of the information
supplied by the applicant, the applicant was taken at his word.”
Pryzner believes that
honour system is, therefore, “Obviously not working.” And that the violations
have been “so egregious, the
barn should be shut down.”
She also worries that,
because the owner has not applied to expand the barn’s manure storage capacity, either, the only way he’ll be able to get rid of the excess is to spread it on
fields in the winter. That practice was illegal at the time and remains illegal today (although the Pallister government has since made it easier to, at
the stroke of the Minister's pen, make it legal.
Liquid hog waste (slurry) spread on frozen fields has a greater
chance of running off and polluting
waterways than it does when spread on unfrozen soil.
The Mayor of the RM, Don Yanick, told Planet in Peril, he could find no mistakes in the Hogwatch submission. He said it had probably been an “oversight” that
no hearing had been held. This was possibly due, he said, to the RM’s lack of
experience when dealing with such large building projects. He promised the
council would review the information and decide what to do.
But he is obviously not
keen on Pryzner's suggestion that the barn be shut down. “Any business
in the community," he explained,
"we like to work with them to solve the issues that they have.
And, if they can’t be solved, then we have a decision to make.”
Verbruggen was not at the
council meeting. And I have not been able to reach him for comment. However, he
told the Brandon Sun, he had done nothing wrong.
He is now in the process of building another barn in a nearby municipality.
Hogwatch Manitoba is made up of
farmers, environmentalists and animal rights activists. It promotes an industry that is "ethically, environmentally and economically sustainable."
-30-
Watch the video version of this story here.
The above story, all too often represents the reality of mega-hog production.
Ads like this, however, are how the industry "spins" its message
into one of sweetness and love.
