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Township settles with hog barn ownerWhen a judge ruled that Huron-Kinloss's building permit was 'issued in error' and the barn's owner suedby DON STONEMANEarly this year, southern Bruce County hog barn owner Gys Geene quietly accepted an out-of-court settlement with the local municipality of Huron-Kinloss as compensation for losses he suffered when the township halted construction on hog barns near Lake Huron.Geene received $395,000, confirms Mitch Twolan, the township's mayor. The settlement was made on Jan. 17 and the township's insurance company footed the bill. Geene would not discuss the settlement with Better Farming. "Everything is quiet now," says the recent immigrant from Holland. When the controversy was at its peak, feelings were running high and the issues became personal. In 2001, the township issued a building permit to Geene, who prepared a construction site for two new 4,000-head hog barns. A local citizens' coalition applied to the courts to have the building permit quashed and a General Division Court judge agreed that it had been issued in error. Geene then sued the township for wrongfully issuing the permit. Geene has since constructed a 3,000-hog barn on the same site. Twolan, a local real estate agent, has been on the township council since municipal amalgamation in 1999 and took the mayor's seat only last November. Twolan says the complex situation was a "no-win" situation. If the township hadn't issued the permit, the farm owner would have sued anyway, he says. He describes the newly amalgamated township as being in an area "in transition" between a strictly agricultural economy and tourism and cottages. The township, with its border on Lake Huron, has become a cottage haven for residents of Kitchener, two hours drive away, and the township has been looking at ways of dealing with conflicting interests. Last fall, the Ontario Municipal Board rejected a township plan to bring into place an intensive agricultural zone, which would have required large livestock barn operators to rezone if they wanted to construct a barn with capacity for 450 animal units or more. A request for rezoning requires a public hearing and this would have brought nutrient management plans into the public realm. "The public wants input into the process" of building a big barn, Twolan asserts, and residents are upset because nutrient management plans are private under provincial law. "It's a lack of trust," he says. As long as nutrient management plans are treated as private documents, "there will always be innuendo and doubt" on the part of local residents, he asserts. Some Huron-Kinloss ratepayers still weren't happy with the 450 animal unit rule, Twolan notes, and wanted the bar set at 250 animal units. He says Huron-Kinloss chose the 450 animal limit because it was mandated as a dividing point in the provincial nutrient management plan discussions. "To be honest, it all goes back to liquid manure," Twolan told Better Pork. Pressed further, he admitted that large, modern dairy farms with liquid manure systems don't concern residents. "It just seems to be the hogs," he concedes, while stressing that the failed zoning was not singling out hog farmers. "All we tried to do was to come up with a compromise that everyone could live with," Twolan says.
Water quality is a big issue along the lake, Twolan says, and faulty cottage septic systems are also under scrutiny. Two groups in the beachside village of Point Clark are asking his council to make inspections of septic systems mandatory in an attempt to improve water quality at the beach. "They are willing to clean up their own back yard," he asserts.BF
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