County potato farmers lose appeal; tribunal upholds compost facility permit

Three Sturgeon County seed potato farmers appealed to the Land and Property Rights Tribunal to try and overturn a development permit for a new compost facility, but in a hearing on July 14, the tribunal sided with the developers. 

The farmers cited the possible spread of late blight — a phytosanitary disease capable of decimating crop yields — as their reason for the appeal. 

The facility is being developed by Heartland Compost, a company formed by CORE Environmental Consulting and C2 Recycling. 

The owner of CORE Environmental and C2 Recycling, Shawn Samborksy, told The Gazette in an interview that through a bidding process last year, Heartland Compost won a contract with the City of Edmonton to manage up to 20,000 tonnes of green bin organics each year, which the facility is being developed for.

Wayne Groot, the third-generation owner of Groot Farms, one of the three farmers who filed an appeal, said the facility could be problematic.

“If they’re bringing in diseased plants or tomatoes or potatoes or whatever into that facility, and it’s right next door to us, there is a concern there," he said.

"If there is an epidemic of some sort, especially in the city of Edmonton or something like that, then it could be brought out here right next door to us,” said Groot, whose fields are to the south of the proposed facility's plot. 

The facility will be built on land owned by Sturgeon County, and will use the northwest plot of land at the intersection of Highway 643 and Range Road 224. Samborksy said he hopes to break ground within the next month.

Late blight, according to the Government of Alberta's website, "spreads by spores produced on infected plant material, such as transplants, volunteer potatoes, weeds, and diseased crop debris."

"[Spores] can move between plants within fields by rain or water splashing or short distances in soil," the website states. "[Spores] can also move long distances, possibly up to 100 kilometres, on the wind or in storm fronts."

On a seed potato farm such as Groot's, as well as the other two farms who appealed the development permit, any sign of a blight is a serious problem, Groot said.

"Nobody wants to buy a seed with late blight in it because you’re supplying a problem," he said. 

Seed potatoes are started in a laboratory to ensure they're disease free. The next step, in the case of Groot Farms, is to plant the plantlets in a greenhouse and grow them in there for a year, before eventually planting them in the field. 

"In field, we’re spraying to try and control the insects and diseases," Groot said. "They’re all inspected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency."

"When we ship to a commercial grower finally, they have the confidence that it’s pretty disease free."

Groot said growing seed potatoes and selling them to commercial growers makes the most sense economically for his farm, as selling potatoes on the fresh market comes with more challenges and risk, he said.

Although the tribunal denied the farmers' appeal, additional conditions were placed on Heartland Compost's development permit to mitigate the risk of late blight spread, which the tribunal acknowledged will be increasingly possible once the facility is operational.

In the tribunal's decision, which can be read online, the additional conditions include the placement of a shelter belt (line of trees or shrubs) to try and account for the spread of late blight through wind; the implementation of vegetation covers on any "vacant, undeveloped, or unused portions of the site;" and monitoring for blight through spore trapping. 

Although the additional conditions were welcomed, Groot said he'd still rather not have the compost facility next door.

“If we have a late blight epidemic and we think it’s because of them — that would be our worst case scenario," Groot said. "I don’t expect that to happen, I’m not losing sleep over this.

"We’d rather not have it here, but there’s lots of things that we’d like to not have here but we learn to live with it.”

The additional conditions were also welcomed by Heartland Compost, Samborksy said.

“Some of the stuff was things we were going to be doing anyways," he said. "We want to be a good neighbour, so making sure these guys’ fears are allayed to some extent and we’re serving as part of the solution in that we’re monitoring it as part of a larger monitoring network."

The facility will be an aerated static pile operation, "which is a process that injects air into piles up to 12 feet high," the tribunal's decision states.

Balancing act

The land used for the compost facility exists within Alberta's Industrial Heartland, which was formally launched in 1998 by Fort Saskatchewan; Lamont County; Strathcona County; and Sturgeon County to attract business investment in the area. Edmonton joined in 2010. 

In Sturgeon County's land-use bylaw (LUB), the plot used for the facility is designated as a "C4" Heartland-commercial district, meaning the plot can "accommodate commercial uses and may provide a combination of shops, services, offices, entertainment, accommodation, and government services located on the same parcel," according to the LUB. 

Prior to approval on Jan. 1, the compost facility plot was designated as a "C3" neighbourhood-commercial district, which wouldn't allow a compost facility.

"I didn’t think too much of it," Groot said of how he remembered initially feeling about the LUB districting change. "I didn’t think it would affect me like this."

"I kind of get it in some ways — jobs are important and tax dollars are important [and] farmers don’t pay a lot of tax," Groot said. "That’s our society, especially in Alberta, we’re pretty gung-ho about development, and agriculture is on the back burner."

When asked how he felt about the tribunal's decision to label the risk of late blight spread as minimal, Groot said, “what risks are we willing to live with for more industry, more tax dollars, more jobs; that’s always the balance, the trade-off."

"Hopefully it’s a good facility that’s well-run and they make some good compost," Groot said.

The facility will be subject to Alberta Environment and Parks regulations, as well as Sturgeon County, which must ensure the facility complies with the additional conditions added to the development permit.