Pigeon Lake in Peril, save one lake to save all
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The burden to correct the NRCB and protect Rangeland and Water quality for ALL of Alberta, re-stabilize the Agriculture economy and protect local, sustainable food networks has fallen on the Pigeon Lake Community. Together, the Impacted families of the Pigeon Lake Feedlot will Defend Pigeon Lake. The legal and experts costs to the community could be as high as $100,000 when this is all done and over.
The appeal can be as soon as 20 days, we have to retain lawyers ASAP. Today we are starting with $2,000 to retain lawyers to start our appeal. All the money raised will go to professional fees to help the community fight and bring about change for all of Alberta.
Wanna do more than just donate?
1) Print the Petition get 20 signatures in blue or black pen and send them back to Marlin Schmidt MLA Edmonton Goldbar.
2) Design your own Flyer and post in your community (great for children to draw on)
3) Click, Share these great articles to keep the media and momentum building!
Comment and tell the viewers about our GofundMe Pigeon Lake in Peril
Western Producer
CTV Feedlot meeting
Global news Community Meeting
Canada Press Meeting
News Piece from NDP Environment Critic
Second News Piece from Marlin Schmidt
Feedlot threatens lake
Fragile Lake Piece
video piece with CTV
Residents raise stink news piece
Ponoka news
4) Did you know there is a mass buried grave of CWD elk buried on the site of the feedlot and Alberta Environment and Alberta Agriculture had no information on it? How might pathogens from this grave start to move when the demand on the groundwater changes hydro-geologic flow? It is standard practice with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) that when domestic livestock or game are infected they are burnt and or buried. A while ago, the property was an elk farm and there was an endemic of CWD. The facility was ordered to bury a mass grave of elk. That is inspected and usually lined with clay. That's all well and good but new development and a significant shift and draw in groundwater or hydrogeology can cause pathogens to move from the grave. Because the CFIA doesn't give much information to NRCB or AB ENV. We have to make sure they properly investigate that before they give a waterlicense
Write your MLA's, these MLA's and councilors ask to have the AOPA reviewed, investigate health impacts, an environmental impact assessment and tell them to save Pigeon Lake.
5) Work on your appeal! Even if you are NOT an Impacted Status person, but you sent in a letter of concern, you can appeal that.
Follow this Appeals Guide , the appendix has lots of links to studies and data. Photographs, maps, histories, case studies, data, research, articles and lawsuites all help. Making an appeal to your letter will help buy the families more time to getting good data for their appeal to block the feedlot. Families making an appeal themselves can use this guide.
6) Come to our next FUNraiser! Next Goat Yoga!
7) Learn more
The impacted families had a Community information night planned!
You Can read the slideshows from that night to learn more.
Kicking the night off will be the:
Cattle Feeders Association
Various Environmental experts
Metis Nations of Alberta talk on significance Pigeon Lake
NRCB policy the importance of public engagement
Former Deputy Minister to talk about how they balance, industry and public interests with policy and laws
Member of Legislative Assembly Marlin Schmidt on our petition and its impacts for the entire province and innovations for the cattle industry.
This was designed to share facts, educate and stop division in the community. Intentionally little information is given about these types of developments.
I moved up near Pigeon Lake to get away from it all really, to be honest I was done with the world in crisis, I wanted to semi-retire and shut out the world. And then a massive feedlot (CFO) proposal came up right in the watershed. Pigeon Lake is on of Alberta’s largest and busiest fresh water lakes.
An incredible Pigeon Lake Watershed Management Plan, that actually won an Emerald Award in 2021, as well as several other watershed policies of the county state emphatically, no CFOs should be in the waters shed. 12 municipalities and first nations collaborated and endorsed the Management Plan.
PLWMP Report https://www.dropbox.com/s/huslbzo6zf9uqhi/PLWMP_2018_Main_Report_20180504_MC4N.pdf?dl=0
PLWMP Appendices https://www.dropbox.com/s/kn52i9xre1sg3z6/PLWMP_2018_Appendix_2018.08.24.pdf?dl=0
I started explaining to folks, in a few Facebook posts why they need to give input and the impacts as well as how the NRCB Policy Framework works.
The information I was putting out started turning heads.
I want to be very clear with you that we, “Families effected by Pigeon Lake Feedlot”, are NOT OPPOSING agriculture, we are FOR IT. The scandals that are happening behind the scenes are taking advantage of hard working farm families not just in Alberta and Canada but around the world. This is a conversation about holding companies like Cargill and JBS accountable and levelling the economic playing field for Alberta Farm Families. Your food doesn't come from feedlots, it comes from the cow-calf operations on Alberta’s Heritage Rangelands. It comes from the love and care of Alberta’s Ranching families. The Pigeon Lake Feedlot is so significant because there is so much clear, indisputable science and proof the feedlot is polluting the lake, I’m not going to talk about it in this interview, the science speaks for itself. Even commercial industrial Feedlot Operators from east of our County are opposing this Feedlot, because it's irresponsible. Farmers that look at its location in relation to the lake; the slopes, creeks and groundwater all say "THIS is a DUMB idea!” This gives agriculture a bad name, just look at the map.
If you want to understand more about how this impacts ALL Alberta Agriculture read our Interview for the Western Producer https://www.dropbox.com/s/6n7806l4jsdooxk/Western%20Producer%20interview.pdf?dl=0
Uproar happened in the community and someone organized an impromptu meeting. Let me stress that again, the lack of public consultation, lead to so much rage a random meeting of 100 citizens self organized in two days! I just went to attend but ended up giving a two hour, very entertaining and informative talk. I used to do that as a third party consultant for Oil & Gas and was taught all of this at SAITs Environmental Technology program. I was also a Conservation Officer based out of Pigeon Lake.
I explained the NRCB framework and how it differs from the ERB framework. There is no environmental oversight unless we all freak out. The NRCB officers don’t have access to all reports in the province so they rely on the County and public pointing out areas of concern to them, and giving them evidence of serious impacts. I then showed the errors the county made and exposed possible interference with the CFO owner.
I also showed how the Agriculture Operations Practices Act (AOPA), that oversees Feedlots, wasn't reviewed in 2017 because the only "stakeholders" were feedlot lobbyists. What was most concerning was the Counties lack of understanding of their role in the NRCB process and misunderstanding of their own non-statutory bylaws and decision guiding policies. The Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) didn’t pursue AOPA review, which would have been in their best interests I feel, because they don't understand the implications. The Reeve at the time, was on the steering committee for the PLWMP, was privy to the contamination in the lake, and is a director for the RMA. The NRCB Feedlot application and operation process doesn't have any of the same steps for public safety the ERB has for oil and gas. The fact that this Feedlot application has even happened, demonstrates the AOPA is broken.
This Feedlot expansion sparked the Pigeon Lake Watershed Association to write a formal point source report , proving current contamination.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/21k05tea171is1s/20220405d_Cl_Notice%20of%20a%20CFO%20Application_Adverse%20Effects%20Background%20Report.pdf?dl=0
I explained how the phosphorus cycle works in this lake, that it triggers a cycle of algae blooms and that it takes 100 years for water to leave the lake. Because the lake isn't mountain fed it doesn't flush. I went over how the upstream impacts on vegetation, impacted velocity, turbidity and volume of water and that glyphosate, endocrine disruptors and estragon run-off likely destroyed the Walleye and Pike spawning grounds. The best part was when I used the data in the above watershed plan to support a point source contamination of the lake from the existing feedlot and I established a suitable representative baseline. I showed how the contamination levels from the feedlot literally “jumped off the charts” as the scale for the graph was logarithmic, not graduated. That is to say, the baseline (approx.10kg/yr) and other streams (approx. 50kg/yr) had such low levels they couldn’t be seen on a graph when the contaminated creeks levels (approx.1000kg/yr) was added. What’s so disturbing is AB Environment was a key player in the PLWMP, and it is their data that points to the current contamination. So why wasn’t this reported to the NRCB? Even worse, why have no fines been levied or licenses cancelled?
I explained how given the proximity to ground water and the low location in the water basin, high, sudden volumes of run off made any pond or monitoring or recovery mitigation technology we have today obsolete. I explained even ERB directive 85 standards for tailings pond construction won't work.
I also explained how Health Canada's acceptable exposure limits work and what the impaction radius and dispersion model meant. I pointed out how absurd it was they had the outfall of a highly contaminated CFO sandwiched between two Provincial Park Beaches. I explained how CFOs give antibiotics and dewormers to the animals so the entire time they are there they shed drug-resistant bacteria and worms. Children playing in the water will be very sick and the beaches will be closed. Already AHS regularly has to close Alberta Provincial Park beaches on Pigeon lake because the coliform counts are too high. The WHO predicts that 1/2 a million Canadians will die from “Super-bug”, drug-resistant E-coli in the next 28 years, our current yearly death rate from E-Coli is 500. Why the spike? UofC research has said Alberta currently has one of the highest rates of E-coli infection in the world, because of our cows and sloped land.
I noticed the Treaty 6 first nations down stream may not have been notified, under the AOPA requirements, so I did. They too uproared and from what I hears on-line, were given formal notice and an extension on the submission deadline.
It's been incredible seeing the support, but also so frustrating for everyone. There was no information or understanding for the public, I was thrown into an advocate role and had to explain complex concepts in easy to digest ways. I wrote about 40 pages of text in 3 days creating links for people to read. While still being on the phone, sucked into zoom meetings, answering questions, posting awareness and had to submit a 50 page bid proposal for a client for my own work. I had meetings with MLAs and the Environment Critic met with me and wrote a letter on our behalf. True work in action. I went two days without sleep trying to get it all done, but I felt a civil obligation to this and my community. Nobody wants to be in this position or have to dedicate this much time.
Neighbours gave statements on how emotionally and physically distressing this process felt. Talking about the all-consuming commitments to meet the short deadlines and the complete lack of information not only about the Proposed Feedlot but the Policy process. People felt being in the dark created a sense of panic and fear and the tensions and divisions in the community.The lack of oversight for obvious unique site conditions, Health or Impact assessments and nobody explaining the Health Canada Exposure Pathways and risks specific to direct impact zones, left the residents feeling violated and a lack of faith in the Governments.
· The application is submitted by industry with little information and no environmental oversight, in this case, they actually wrote the wrong watershed! This is intentional, the more information they give the more community push back.
• The public gets a vague 1 or 2 notices in a weekly local paper.
• Health Canada has a dispersion model calculation, it means the government knows your health is adversely effected if you live in this radius. Not, might be, not could be, your health will be effected. The NRCB isn’t even required by law to give those people the notice, it's a "curtesy of the NRCB". Look it up, it's on their website. Anyone that might be impacted has 21 days from the application to submit a concern to the NRCB.
Keep in mind, everything is so vague and convoluted in the AOPA, people don't know what's happening let alone understand potential impacts. You can't tell if this is just a family farm or a Factory until you pull out the back schedules of the AOPA. The terminology in the AOPA intentionally disguises Commercial Industrial Feedlots.
• If you don’t submit a letter; you loose your rights to object, there is no requirement for the applicant to mitigate any impacts. Even if they “mitigate impacts” it doesn't have to be effective. It's just enough to remove any liability down the road.
• There is also no environmental impact assessment (EIA) required for Massive Industrial Feedlots. Right there on the NRCB website you can read it. There is no laws to even trigger an EIA.
• People assume its regulated with environmental oversight like the ERB and Oil and Gas development. But its not. The NRCB wont look at any site specific conditions like slope, a waterbody on the verge of collapse and disturbed sensitive spawning grounds unless the public or County tell them. Unfortunately, our County didn’t understand their role in the NRCB process to point out areas of concern. Let alone did they point out the Emerald Award winning Pigeon Lake Watershed Management Plan (PLWMP) that all 12 municipalities and First Nations signed off on. Our County fails to even mention the PLWMP to the NRCB!
• It’s sad, because most people assume there will be a public engagement meeting like oil and gas, or they assume it's regulated with environmental oversight like the ERB, so they don’t say anything and forfeit their rights. That forfeit of rights is in the notice (see attached). To be honest, the ERB wasn’t regulated at first either. Albertas Oil and Gas executives didn’t set out to make the environmentally responsible oil and gas industry we are famous for now. The Policy framework of the former ERCB looked very similar to that of todays NRCB, environmental regulations didn’t come in until Albertans started to demand for them in the Policies and legislation overseeing the ERB.
Because of this misconception that the NRCB has it under control, there is a lack of action from the public, the catch 22 is, the lack of action from the public stops any environmental oversight and stops the NRCB properly functioning.
• This short 21 day deadline is incredibly stressful for community members. All consuming dread and emotional exhaustion. Confusion, panic and division are common in the community. People are afraid to speak out in an increasingly partisan world. Mental health suffers, hopelessness and anger is all consuming. There is no advocate or NRCB representative to answer all of the questions or explain what's happening. The NRCB officers are just stretched too thin. You can search my name Jeannette Hall on the Facebook Pigeon Lake Alberta Positive Group and you can see all the information I was getting out for people. There was no-time to organize. Here is a link to a Letter Marlin Schmidt, MLA Environment Critic wrote on our behalf. https://www.dropbox.com/s/hyujwuges7hhofp/letter%20to%20Min.%20Nixon%20April%202022.pdf?dl=0
• From there it could be as soon as 44 days to a year before communities get an answer and then if they decide to appeal they have 10 days, less if its a holiday, to file an appeal at the Alberta Court of Appeal and file an injunction. Guess who pays all the legal fees to appeal? Yup the impacted community.
• The only people that are guaranteed to be allowed to appeal are those in the 1.5km radius of the feedlot. Talk about a kick in the teeth. You could be submitting all kinds of evidence you're impacted and the NRCB doesn't have to consider it or allow you to appeal.
• For those few that can appeal, no new information is allowed into the appeal. Yup, ONLY the information the impacted people pointed out in those 21 days is allowed to be used in the appeal. That's because you aren’t appealing whether or not the Feedlot should be there or will have detrimental impacts. You are appealing the decision the NRCB Officer made. That means, the NRCB appeals board can only use the same information the NRCB officer had presented to him in those 21 days, that includes the documents the County refers to.
Stupid eh?
• So in addition to having no-idea what is going on, anyone outside of that 1.5km radius has to track down someone in that radius and ask them to submit all of their concerns or evidence to use later in the appeal. And because our Councilors didn’t even reference the EMERALD AWARD WINNING Watershed Management Plan with 12 Counties endorsing it, we had to scramble and submit that too with a neighbor. The stress is unreal and can not be understated.
Here's another dumb thing in the AOPA.
• If a feedlot is built, it automatically makes it so no neighbours can subdivide or build a home within that 1.5km radius. But there is nothing that stops a feedlot from moving next door to an existing neighbours home. So every home owner is vulnerable to either loosing all their property value if one moves in or being restricted from any future development but there is only a set back of 400 meters restricting any feedlot and they don’t have to compensate anyone for property loss.
• So all the burden is on the community. $100,000 in hydrogeological and lawyer fees by thee time its done. Countless hours, all burdened on the community to fix the NRCB failures. What "red tape" are we cutting in Alberta? I can not state enough how much time and energy this has sucked from us. We all have lives and jobs and families and none of us are getting paid. Our daily lives and property values are hugely effected and nobody has offered us compensation.
• There's this belief the applicant did all this environmental planning. They didn’t. There is no requirement to figure out water licensing. Manure storage and spreading only has to be 30 meters from a creek, which is nothing. That doesn’t even offer a safe enough distance to meet Canada’s Bio-security guidelines. There is no requirement to inspect liners in later years or after ponds are emptied. There is no lagoon monitoring or mitigation. When the NRCB says the “monitor sites” the public thinks, like Oil and Gas, there must be yearly sampling and reporting of groundwater and soil. But what the NRCB means by “monitoring” is that they monitor the complaint line for public complaints.
• The first thing the NRCB or any Feedlot lobbyist says about contamination or complaint is “Prove it”. Well I will tell you, there is no Feedlot operator running out to the poop piles and manure lagoons looking at overflow during heavy-rain events or spring runoff. What would they even be able to do to stop any contamination at that moment? Feedlot operators are making sure cows aren’t standing in muck, shivering or snotty. They are making sure there is wind blocks, keep in mind most of these animals are exposed at the tops of hills. They are making sure water isn’t standing in feed bunks and putting out extra ration. When they get a moment they are inside warming up or drying off saddles, horses and the dogs. What's the likelihood of them getting reported of contaminating a river in that weather, who's there to see it? Even still, how can an NRCB or Environment officer prove it in court for a charge to stick. They don’t show up to respond to a complaint until days later, by then, they can only educate the operator because the proof has washed away. So what’s the consequences for a feedlot operator for destroying the environment? Nothing, there is greater financial consequences if animals are sick so they focus on that instead. So yeah, “Prove it” was the knee jerk reaction we got from the NRCB and the goons trying to downplay this. Well we can, and we will.
• Look at Pigeon Lake, here an entire community of the public, 12 municipalities, Watershed groups, Biodiversity Monitoring groups, Alberta Health Services, and Alberta Parks and Environment, Emerald Award Judges all had the same Alberta Environment data in their hands. The data that shows “off the charts” contamination coming from the existing feedlot. And everyone assumed the NRCB know about it or was “Monitoring” it. At the time of the application, the NRCB said the Feedlot was in good standing and had no complaints! It's just unimaginable this is still happening.
• Neighbors don’t want to get into neighbors business out here. We aren’t running around with high-zoom lenses and water sampling kits. The public never reported it. We minded our own business like most Albertans and figured someone had it under control.
That's why Pigeon Lake Feedlot is so perfect for making an example of how the NRCB and AOPA failed.
• Here the community of 12 municipalities has raised over a million dollars to help the lake recover and made every unified effort. And this feedlot undermines it all. NRCB needs to just pull the existing feedlots license for the next 6 years, while the PLWMP is active, and let the people see the lake recover.
If you don’t submit a letter; you loose your rights to object, there is no requirement for the applicant to mitigate any impacts. Even if they “mitigate impacts” it doesn't have to be effective. It's just enough to remove any liability down the road.
The terminology in the AOPA intentionally disguises Commercial Industrial Feedlots. Citizens were expected to understand specialized technical implications and couldn’t recognize the differences in Government from ERB and NRCB or Fish and Wildlife and Ab Environment, nobody knew who to talk to. This lack of understanding lead to a false sense of safety in many felt the same environmental oversight that regulates Oil and Gas would apply to the NRCB. The process is too simple for those applying for feedlots and overly complicated for those opposed. The application had no plan for monitoring, liners and named the wrong watershed. Had we not had the lake which aggravates contamination migration and impacts, and been any other community, we would have been helpless. There was no monitoring of the existing CFO’s operation and detrimental impacts to the Lake had gone unreported and a historical spawning ground was destroyed. “Monitoring” to the NRCB means we monitor the 24/7 complaints line, for when the public report something. Unless the public are running around with high-zoom cameras and water sampling kits, there is no way to prove a release and the public is under the wrong belief there are Officers out there actually checking.
Environment Critic Letter
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hyujwuges7hhofp/letter%20to%20Min.%20Nixon%20April%202022.pdf?dl=0
The very nice NRCB officer, overseeing the application appreciated me helping to explain and keep residents calm but informed. I routinely reminded folks to not take it out too much on the NRCB staff as they were very underfunded and spread thin. My community overwhelmed me with gratitude but also pleas to help provide information so they may apply for impacted status.
I keep joking there’s so much drama, CBC is bound to make a mini-series, or if nothing else we’ll make Sundance winning film.
The AOPA doesn't just affect my community, it effects all Albertans.
Environment destroying feedlots have gotten away by disguising themselves as agriculture for far too long. The main objective in our county is to preserve agriculture land because it provides environmental and aesthetic benefits. Feedlots do not require productive farmland, the pollution from them destroys productive farmland and water. Most of the agriculture community doesn't understand what this is because the feedlots hide behind agriculture language. In our County, I would assume approximately 80% of the livestock agriculture falls into a low impact class not regulated by the AOPA. Of the remaining 20% that do, probably 90% fall in Column 2 of the AOPA, which is usually family farms having small feedlots for fall calves, this is still pretty low risk and easy to mitigate. The Column 3 CFO’s can have anywhere from about 1,750 cows to infinity. They are all called “Intensive agriculture”, and Column 2 and Column 3 are both called CFOs. See how difficult that is to distinguish, much less comprehend the impacts?
Column 3 Feedlots are destroying agriculture and bad for our economy, land and future. Ever heard of “Cowspiracy”? This is what those documentaries are talking about. Massive feedlots cut corners on animal welfare, human health and environmental risk mitigation. They Convert “Good for Everyone” productive pasture and forest agriculture land into intensive cropland. They can grow government subsidized cereal crops, for big profits, buy insurance written-off damaged crops to feedlot cattle and the feedlot lobbyist get funds by the big chemical companies used in crops production. All that lobbying has made the AOPA the useless Act it is today, and allowed these commercial intensive operations to hide behind the farmers they hurt.
These poor sucker, traditional farmers are drowning in debt just trying to keep bills paid. The feedlots have destroyed the cow industry by making it a monopoly at the buyers end. Cargill and JBS hold the prices below value. This is not a commodities market as we saw during the pandemic, this is a monopoly. Traditional farmers try to hold out for a market increase that will never happen, eventually they have to pay bills, so they take a few losses. Bankrupt farms are liquidating good animals and adding to the supply of undervalued animals on the market. Suicide and mental health distress rates of farmers are skyrocketing around the world and Alberta is no different. Eventually, those farmers, maybe about 95% in my County have to either convert their environmentally beneficial pasture into environmentally destructive cropland and start their own animal-welfare-destroying feedlot to survive. Majority of farms are hurting because a feedlots low overheads are holding the prices down and nobody else can compete.
This conversion to cropland destroys productive Agriculture land, and reduces habitat for large mammals, causing more wildlife conflicts. Chemicals for crops destroy; soil nutrients, micro-biomes, invertebrate and insect populations and production assessment values drop. Shallow rooting monocultures and the incorporation of tilling in feedlot manure erode soils, reduces water holding capacity and contaminate surface and ground water. In my County, the West half is forested slopes running into sensitive, slow moving waters, mucket clams, river otters and fish eggs require low silt, slow moving water. The increased levels of land clearing and farm chemicals is depleting the water-ecosystems. Already, chemical run-off from Alberta’s Cropland and Feedlots reach Lake Winnipeg and destroy that aquatic ecosystem the same way it does Pigeon lake. Destruction to the environment and residents is far worse than Oil and Gas activity but there is still nothing to protect us and our representatives don't seem to understand. Meanwhile research and supports for forage production has been cut by Alberta Agriculture and research has been taken over by the chemical companies making the mess, further dominating the dialogue and spreading misinformation about the industry. We need to level the playing field for other farmers and increase overhead for feedlots by making them responsible for the damage they do.
In the face of climate-crisis, water hungry and polluting feedlots are going to push their way up the water producing slopes of Alberta. They have already put considerable pressure on Southern Alberta’s aquifers and the industry has taken no steps to recycle and clean water they use nor collect the GHGs they produce. In Alberta, agriculture has so many claims to water rights given their “first in line” status, that means water normally allocated for the environment is ever reduced to beyond thresholds that habitats need to survive. The ecological collapse is already evidenced in the Oldman River Watershed and cresting collapse with Pigeon lake. This UCP Alberta Government made fanciful promises of transitioning to better agriculture practices like “no-till” farming when Climate Policy was created. We can clearly see there is no plan in place for no-till farming ad tilling, aggravated by feedlots is encroaching into Alberta’s steep slopes, where their impacts increase exponentially.
Cows and Fish, Trout’s un-limited, Nature Conservancy, Nature Conservancy of Canada, Alberta Wilderness Association, Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation, Edmonton Area Land Trust, Battle River Watershed Alliance, Bow-River Basin Council, Livingston Land Owners, Ghost Wilderness Area, CPAWS, Pigeon Lake Watershed Association, Greenpeace, David Suzuki Foundation, Y2Y, Eco-justice, The Environmental Law Centre, Foothills Forage, West Central Forage, dept. of Fisheries, Health Canada and countless other Environmental Advocates, can all spend millions in funds and billions in hours trying to protect people and the environment but it is all undermined by the careless, cowardice management practices of Feedlots. All of the above causes have been fighting various aspects of impacts from feedlots for a while, and I hope this unites our efforts.
I would love it if anyone in this email would host our Petition, if you could help bring awareness to this, and if any Members of Parliament would help present our Petition and future Bill.
We, Undersigned Albertans, are officially petitioning Legislative Assembly to adopt Health and Environmental Impact Assessments and oversights for Column 3 Feedlots and to make distinguishable from traditional agriculture and clear to the public their impacts.
Changes to the AOPA we need;
Clear, different terminology other than; Agriculture, Intensive Agriculture, and calling smaller column 2 CFOs a clearly, distinguishably different name than a column 3 CFO to make it apparent to the public.
Automatic Health and Environmental Impact Assessments,
2 public consultations with a 75 day response period,
rules on interference with public engagement,
decommissioning budgets in trust,
remediation contingency of 15% the properties value in trust,
monitoring reporting by a third party consultant every spring,
automatic refusal if a neighbor falls within the impact radius,
not on land with slope greater than 5 %,
not requiring more pasture or forest to be converted to cropland,
rainwater harvesting technologies,
shade for livestock,
water release testing and approval prior to release,
sealed, manure bio-treatment plants and methane production for any facility over 10,000 head,
water treatment recovery/recycling for facilities over 10,000 head to lower groundwater demands,
to remain 15 km from any major navigable tributary or named lake,
to be prohibited from the headwaters or source of major watersheds,
to have dedicated engineered wetlands for the outfalls and surface run off,
yearly inspections of manure slurry pond liners and replacement of HDPE liners after they are emptied,
Just so everyone is aware, what we are doing protects traditional agriculture lands. Column 3 feed lots can have the minimum at the same time, 350+ cow finishers, 500+ feeders, 900+feeder calves to infinity. That's at least 1,750 to unlimited, once they have the approval to get into this class there is really no stopping them.
In addition, we ask for justice for the existing contamination and ask for support to enforce the largest fines under the Water Act and the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act and to revoke the existing approval for the feedlot. We request formal Critical Fish Habitat Protections on the spawning grounds of Pigeon Lake.
PLWA has given me permission to share this information, if anyone wanted to make clips for social media or the news, to help bring awareness you are welcome to it. If you agree with this letter, please send your own emails of support in to those Ministers, Members and Critics. Let the Non-profits and Media know you request their support in spreading awareness.
Down load and print off a copy of our petition and ask for signatures in blue or black pen and send them back to PLWA.
Here is the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institutes Phosphorus Map . It measures Phosphorus in Albertas soil. When you look over Feedlot alley near Lethbridge you can see all the Brown coloured cells which represent Feedlots. When you zoom in on Pigeon Lakes NW shore you can see the existing Feedlot and that is is the ONLY significant source of Phosphorus for the two contaminated creeks.
https://esi-dev.maps.abmi.ca/#/e759f07c-9eb2-4d6b-8a7d-39b94ce15b8b
The science nerd in me, thought it would be fun to show the Phosphorous Impacted soil of a Feedlot I know I have personally called in and complained about near Reed Deer. I have complained 3-5 times in the past few years to NRCB, each time ending in “Education” by the NRCB to the Feedlot Operator. So here is a side by side of the street maps, with the feedlot in red. Then I overlay the Phosphorus Impacted maps. Then I Overlay the aerial photo from google maps, before I finally zoom right in on the feedlot. You can see how despite all the calls there is nothing the NRCB has done to protect Piper Creek. A creek several children in Red Deer play in and other livestock drink from downstream.
Now, how many feedlots could I find on Google Maps and see they are in violation of the NRCB AOPA setbacks or storage management rules? I could make a public contest and give prizes to all the people that find violations on Google maps and report it to the NRCB! I think we can prove the existing AOPA is flawed and ineffective. LOL
Then I over lay the Soil Phosphorous.....
Then I zoom in on google maps where the Source of the Phosphorous is.......
This is the feedlot that contaminates Piper creek and despite years of reports to the NRCB every rainfall eventthe creek is polluted again.
The appeal can be as soon as 20 days, we have to retain lawyers ASAP. Today we are starting with $2,000 to retain lawyers to start our appeal. All the money raised will go to professional fees to help the community fight and bring about change for all of Alberta.
Wanna do more than just donate?
1) Print the Petition get 20 signatures in blue or black pen and send them back to Marlin Schmidt MLA Edmonton Goldbar.
2) Design your own Flyer and post in your community (great for children to draw on)
3) Click, Share these great articles to keep the media and momentum building!
Comment and tell the viewers about our GofundMe Pigeon Lake in Peril
Western Producer
CTV Feedlot meeting
Global news Community Meeting
Canada Press Meeting
News Piece from NDP Environment Critic
Second News Piece from Marlin Schmidt
Feedlot threatens lake
Fragile Lake Piece
video piece with CTV
Residents raise stink news piece
Ponoka news
4) Did you know there is a mass buried grave of CWD elk buried on the site of the feedlot and Alberta Environment and Alberta Agriculture had no information on it? How might pathogens from this grave start to move when the demand on the groundwater changes hydro-geologic flow? It is standard practice with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) that when domestic livestock or game are infected they are burnt and or buried. A while ago, the property was an elk farm and there was an endemic of CWD. The facility was ordered to bury a mass grave of elk. That is inspected and usually lined with clay. That's all well and good but new development and a significant shift and draw in groundwater or hydrogeology can cause pathogens to move from the grave. Because the CFIA doesn't give much information to NRCB or AB ENV. We have to make sure they properly investigate that before they give a waterlicense
Write your MLA's, these MLA's and councilors ask to have the AOPA reviewed, investigate health impacts, an environmental impact assessment and tell them to save Pigeon Lake.
5) Work on your appeal! Even if you are NOT an Impacted Status person, but you sent in a letter of concern, you can appeal that.
Follow this Appeals Guide , the appendix has lots of links to studies and data. Photographs, maps, histories, case studies, data, research, articles and lawsuites all help. Making an appeal to your letter will help buy the families more time to getting good data for their appeal to block the feedlot. Families making an appeal themselves can use this guide.
6) Come to our next FUNraiser! Next Goat Yoga!
7) Learn more
The impacted families had a Community information night planned!
You Can read the slideshows from that night to learn more.
Kicking the night off will be the:
Cattle Feeders Association
Various Environmental experts
Metis Nations of Alberta talk on significance Pigeon Lake
NRCB policy the importance of public engagement
Former Deputy Minister to talk about how they balance, industry and public interests with policy and laws
Member of Legislative Assembly Marlin Schmidt on our petition and its impacts for the entire province and innovations for the cattle industry.
This was designed to share facts, educate and stop division in the community. Intentionally little information is given about these types of developments.
I moved up near Pigeon Lake to get away from it all really, to be honest I was done with the world in crisis, I wanted to semi-retire and shut out the world. And then a massive feedlot (CFO) proposal came up right in the watershed. Pigeon Lake is on of Alberta’s largest and busiest fresh water lakes.
An incredible Pigeon Lake Watershed Management Plan, that actually won an Emerald Award in 2021, as well as several other watershed policies of the county state emphatically, no CFOs should be in the waters shed. 12 municipalities and first nations collaborated and endorsed the Management Plan.
PLWMP Report https://www.dropbox.com/s/huslbzo6zf9uqhi/PLWMP_2018_Main_Report_20180504_MC4N.pdf?dl=0
PLWMP Appendices https://www.dropbox.com/s/kn52i9xre1sg3z6/PLWMP_2018_Appendix_2018.08.24.pdf?dl=0
I started explaining to folks, in a few Facebook posts why they need to give input and the impacts as well as how the NRCB Policy Framework works.
The information I was putting out started turning heads.
I want to be very clear with you that we, “Families effected by Pigeon Lake Feedlot”, are NOT OPPOSING agriculture, we are FOR IT. The scandals that are happening behind the scenes are taking advantage of hard working farm families not just in Alberta and Canada but around the world. This is a conversation about holding companies like Cargill and JBS accountable and levelling the economic playing field for Alberta Farm Families. Your food doesn't come from feedlots, it comes from the cow-calf operations on Alberta’s Heritage Rangelands. It comes from the love and care of Alberta’s Ranching families. The Pigeon Lake Feedlot is so significant because there is so much clear, indisputable science and proof the feedlot is polluting the lake, I’m not going to talk about it in this interview, the science speaks for itself. Even commercial industrial Feedlot Operators from east of our County are opposing this Feedlot, because it's irresponsible. Farmers that look at its location in relation to the lake; the slopes, creeks and groundwater all say "THIS is a DUMB idea!” This gives agriculture a bad name, just look at the map.
If you want to understand more about how this impacts ALL Alberta Agriculture read our Interview for the Western Producer https://www.dropbox.com/s/6n7806l4jsdooxk/Western%20Producer%20interview.pdf?dl=0
Uproar happened in the community and someone organized an impromptu meeting. Let me stress that again, the lack of public consultation, lead to so much rage a random meeting of 100 citizens self organized in two days! I just went to attend but ended up giving a two hour, very entertaining and informative talk. I used to do that as a third party consultant for Oil & Gas and was taught all of this at SAITs Environmental Technology program. I was also a Conservation Officer based out of Pigeon Lake.
I explained the NRCB framework and how it differs from the ERB framework. There is no environmental oversight unless we all freak out. The NRCB officers don’t have access to all reports in the province so they rely on the County and public pointing out areas of concern to them, and giving them evidence of serious impacts. I then showed the errors the county made and exposed possible interference with the CFO owner.
I also showed how the Agriculture Operations Practices Act (AOPA), that oversees Feedlots, wasn't reviewed in 2017 because the only "stakeholders" were feedlot lobbyists. What was most concerning was the Counties lack of understanding of their role in the NRCB process and misunderstanding of their own non-statutory bylaws and decision guiding policies. The Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) didn’t pursue AOPA review, which would have been in their best interests I feel, because they don't understand the implications. The Reeve at the time, was on the steering committee for the PLWMP, was privy to the contamination in the lake, and is a director for the RMA. The NRCB Feedlot application and operation process doesn't have any of the same steps for public safety the ERB has for oil and gas. The fact that this Feedlot application has even happened, demonstrates the AOPA is broken.
This Feedlot expansion sparked the Pigeon Lake Watershed Association to write a formal point source report , proving current contamination.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/21k05tea171is1s/20220405d_Cl_Notice%20of%20a%20CFO%20Application_Adverse%20Effects%20Background%20Report.pdf?dl=0
I explained how the phosphorus cycle works in this lake, that it triggers a cycle of algae blooms and that it takes 100 years for water to leave the lake. Because the lake isn't mountain fed it doesn't flush. I went over how the upstream impacts on vegetation, impacted velocity, turbidity and volume of water and that glyphosate, endocrine disruptors and estragon run-off likely destroyed the Walleye and Pike spawning grounds. The best part was when I used the data in the above watershed plan to support a point source contamination of the lake from the existing feedlot and I established a suitable representative baseline. I showed how the contamination levels from the feedlot literally “jumped off the charts” as the scale for the graph was logarithmic, not graduated. That is to say, the baseline (approx.10kg/yr) and other streams (approx. 50kg/yr) had such low levels they couldn’t be seen on a graph when the contaminated creeks levels (approx.1000kg/yr) was added. What’s so disturbing is AB Environment was a key player in the PLWMP, and it is their data that points to the current contamination. So why wasn’t this reported to the NRCB? Even worse, why have no fines been levied or licenses cancelled?
I explained how given the proximity to ground water and the low location in the water basin, high, sudden volumes of run off made any pond or monitoring or recovery mitigation technology we have today obsolete. I explained even ERB directive 85 standards for tailings pond construction won't work.
I also explained how Health Canada's acceptable exposure limits work and what the impaction radius and dispersion model meant. I pointed out how absurd it was they had the outfall of a highly contaminated CFO sandwiched between two Provincial Park Beaches. I explained how CFOs give antibiotics and dewormers to the animals so the entire time they are there they shed drug-resistant bacteria and worms. Children playing in the water will be very sick and the beaches will be closed. Already AHS regularly has to close Alberta Provincial Park beaches on Pigeon lake because the coliform counts are too high. The WHO predicts that 1/2 a million Canadians will die from “Super-bug”, drug-resistant E-coli in the next 28 years, our current yearly death rate from E-Coli is 500. Why the spike? UofC research has said Alberta currently has one of the highest rates of E-coli infection in the world, because of our cows and sloped land.
I noticed the Treaty 6 first nations down stream may not have been notified, under the AOPA requirements, so I did. They too uproared and from what I hears on-line, were given formal notice and an extension on the submission deadline.
It's been incredible seeing the support, but also so frustrating for everyone. There was no information or understanding for the public, I was thrown into an advocate role and had to explain complex concepts in easy to digest ways. I wrote about 40 pages of text in 3 days creating links for people to read. While still being on the phone, sucked into zoom meetings, answering questions, posting awareness and had to submit a 50 page bid proposal for a client for my own work. I had meetings with MLAs and the Environment Critic met with me and wrote a letter on our behalf. True work in action. I went two days without sleep trying to get it all done, but I felt a civil obligation to this and my community. Nobody wants to be in this position or have to dedicate this much time.
Neighbours gave statements on how emotionally and physically distressing this process felt. Talking about the all-consuming commitments to meet the short deadlines and the complete lack of information not only about the Proposed Feedlot but the Policy process. People felt being in the dark created a sense of panic and fear and the tensions and divisions in the community.The lack of oversight for obvious unique site conditions, Health or Impact assessments and nobody explaining the Health Canada Exposure Pathways and risks specific to direct impact zones, left the residents feeling violated and a lack of faith in the Governments.
· The application is submitted by industry with little information and no environmental oversight, in this case, they actually wrote the wrong watershed! This is intentional, the more information they give the more community push back.
• The public gets a vague 1 or 2 notices in a weekly local paper.
• Health Canada has a dispersion model calculation, it means the government knows your health is adversely effected if you live in this radius. Not, might be, not could be, your health will be effected. The NRCB isn’t even required by law to give those people the notice, it's a "curtesy of the NRCB". Look it up, it's on their website. Anyone that might be impacted has 21 days from the application to submit a concern to the NRCB.
Keep in mind, everything is so vague and convoluted in the AOPA, people don't know what's happening let alone understand potential impacts. You can't tell if this is just a family farm or a Factory until you pull out the back schedules of the AOPA. The terminology in the AOPA intentionally disguises Commercial Industrial Feedlots.
• If you don’t submit a letter; you loose your rights to object, there is no requirement for the applicant to mitigate any impacts. Even if they “mitigate impacts” it doesn't have to be effective. It's just enough to remove any liability down the road.
• There is also no environmental impact assessment (EIA) required for Massive Industrial Feedlots. Right there on the NRCB website you can read it. There is no laws to even trigger an EIA.
• People assume its regulated with environmental oversight like the ERB and Oil and Gas development. But its not. The NRCB wont look at any site specific conditions like slope, a waterbody on the verge of collapse and disturbed sensitive spawning grounds unless the public or County tell them. Unfortunately, our County didn’t understand their role in the NRCB process to point out areas of concern. Let alone did they point out the Emerald Award winning Pigeon Lake Watershed Management Plan (PLWMP) that all 12 municipalities and First Nations signed off on. Our County fails to even mention the PLWMP to the NRCB!
• It’s sad, because most people assume there will be a public engagement meeting like oil and gas, or they assume it's regulated with environmental oversight like the ERB, so they don’t say anything and forfeit their rights. That forfeit of rights is in the notice (see attached). To be honest, the ERB wasn’t regulated at first either. Albertas Oil and Gas executives didn’t set out to make the environmentally responsible oil and gas industry we are famous for now. The Policy framework of the former ERCB looked very similar to that of todays NRCB, environmental regulations didn’t come in until Albertans started to demand for them in the Policies and legislation overseeing the ERB.
Because of this misconception that the NRCB has it under control, there is a lack of action from the public, the catch 22 is, the lack of action from the public stops any environmental oversight and stops the NRCB properly functioning.
• This short 21 day deadline is incredibly stressful for community members. All consuming dread and emotional exhaustion. Confusion, panic and division are common in the community. People are afraid to speak out in an increasingly partisan world. Mental health suffers, hopelessness and anger is all consuming. There is no advocate or NRCB representative to answer all of the questions or explain what's happening. The NRCB officers are just stretched too thin. You can search my name Jeannette Hall on the Facebook Pigeon Lake Alberta Positive Group and you can see all the information I was getting out for people. There was no-time to organize. Here is a link to a Letter Marlin Schmidt, MLA Environment Critic wrote on our behalf. https://www.dropbox.com/s/hyujwuges7hhofp/letter%20to%20Min.%20Nixon%20April%202022.pdf?dl=0
• From there it could be as soon as 44 days to a year before communities get an answer and then if they decide to appeal they have 10 days, less if its a holiday, to file an appeal at the Alberta Court of Appeal and file an injunction. Guess who pays all the legal fees to appeal? Yup the impacted community.
• The only people that are guaranteed to be allowed to appeal are those in the 1.5km radius of the feedlot. Talk about a kick in the teeth. You could be submitting all kinds of evidence you're impacted and the NRCB doesn't have to consider it or allow you to appeal.
• For those few that can appeal, no new information is allowed into the appeal. Yup, ONLY the information the impacted people pointed out in those 21 days is allowed to be used in the appeal. That's because you aren’t appealing whether or not the Feedlot should be there or will have detrimental impacts. You are appealing the decision the NRCB Officer made. That means, the NRCB appeals board can only use the same information the NRCB officer had presented to him in those 21 days, that includes the documents the County refers to.
Stupid eh?
• So in addition to having no-idea what is going on, anyone outside of that 1.5km radius has to track down someone in that radius and ask them to submit all of their concerns or evidence to use later in the appeal. And because our Councilors didn’t even reference the EMERALD AWARD WINNING Watershed Management Plan with 12 Counties endorsing it, we had to scramble and submit that too with a neighbor. The stress is unreal and can not be understated.
Here's another dumb thing in the AOPA.
• If a feedlot is built, it automatically makes it so no neighbours can subdivide or build a home within that 1.5km radius. But there is nothing that stops a feedlot from moving next door to an existing neighbours home. So every home owner is vulnerable to either loosing all their property value if one moves in or being restricted from any future development but there is only a set back of 400 meters restricting any feedlot and they don’t have to compensate anyone for property loss.
• So all the burden is on the community. $100,000 in hydrogeological and lawyer fees by thee time its done. Countless hours, all burdened on the community to fix the NRCB failures. What "red tape" are we cutting in Alberta? I can not state enough how much time and energy this has sucked from us. We all have lives and jobs and families and none of us are getting paid. Our daily lives and property values are hugely effected and nobody has offered us compensation.
• There's this belief the applicant did all this environmental planning. They didn’t. There is no requirement to figure out water licensing. Manure storage and spreading only has to be 30 meters from a creek, which is nothing. That doesn’t even offer a safe enough distance to meet Canada’s Bio-security guidelines. There is no requirement to inspect liners in later years or after ponds are emptied. There is no lagoon monitoring or mitigation. When the NRCB says the “monitor sites” the public thinks, like Oil and Gas, there must be yearly sampling and reporting of groundwater and soil. But what the NRCB means by “monitoring” is that they monitor the complaint line for public complaints.
• The first thing the NRCB or any Feedlot lobbyist says about contamination or complaint is “Prove it”. Well I will tell you, there is no Feedlot operator running out to the poop piles and manure lagoons looking at overflow during heavy-rain events or spring runoff. What would they even be able to do to stop any contamination at that moment? Feedlot operators are making sure cows aren’t standing in muck, shivering or snotty. They are making sure there is wind blocks, keep in mind most of these animals are exposed at the tops of hills. They are making sure water isn’t standing in feed bunks and putting out extra ration. When they get a moment they are inside warming up or drying off saddles, horses and the dogs. What's the likelihood of them getting reported of contaminating a river in that weather, who's there to see it? Even still, how can an NRCB or Environment officer prove it in court for a charge to stick. They don’t show up to respond to a complaint until days later, by then, they can only educate the operator because the proof has washed away. So what’s the consequences for a feedlot operator for destroying the environment? Nothing, there is greater financial consequences if animals are sick so they focus on that instead. So yeah, “Prove it” was the knee jerk reaction we got from the NRCB and the goons trying to downplay this. Well we can, and we will.
• Look at Pigeon Lake, here an entire community of the public, 12 municipalities, Watershed groups, Biodiversity Monitoring groups, Alberta Health Services, and Alberta Parks and Environment, Emerald Award Judges all had the same Alberta Environment data in their hands. The data that shows “off the charts” contamination coming from the existing feedlot. And everyone assumed the NRCB know about it or was “Monitoring” it. At the time of the application, the NRCB said the Feedlot was in good standing and had no complaints! It's just unimaginable this is still happening.
• Neighbors don’t want to get into neighbors business out here. We aren’t running around with high-zoom lenses and water sampling kits. The public never reported it. We minded our own business like most Albertans and figured someone had it under control.
That's why Pigeon Lake Feedlot is so perfect for making an example of how the NRCB and AOPA failed.
• Here the community of 12 municipalities has raised over a million dollars to help the lake recover and made every unified effort. And this feedlot undermines it all. NRCB needs to just pull the existing feedlots license for the next 6 years, while the PLWMP is active, and let the people see the lake recover.
If you don’t submit a letter; you loose your rights to object, there is no requirement for the applicant to mitigate any impacts. Even if they “mitigate impacts” it doesn't have to be effective. It's just enough to remove any liability down the road.
The terminology in the AOPA intentionally disguises Commercial Industrial Feedlots. Citizens were expected to understand specialized technical implications and couldn’t recognize the differences in Government from ERB and NRCB or Fish and Wildlife and Ab Environment, nobody knew who to talk to. This lack of understanding lead to a false sense of safety in many felt the same environmental oversight that regulates Oil and Gas would apply to the NRCB. The process is too simple for those applying for feedlots and overly complicated for those opposed. The application had no plan for monitoring, liners and named the wrong watershed. Had we not had the lake which aggravates contamination migration and impacts, and been any other community, we would have been helpless. There was no monitoring of the existing CFO’s operation and detrimental impacts to the Lake had gone unreported and a historical spawning ground was destroyed. “Monitoring” to the NRCB means we monitor the 24/7 complaints line, for when the public report something. Unless the public are running around with high-zoom cameras and water sampling kits, there is no way to prove a release and the public is under the wrong belief there are Officers out there actually checking.
Environment Critic Letter
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hyujwuges7hhofp/letter%20to%20Min.%20Nixon%20April%202022.pdf?dl=0
The very nice NRCB officer, overseeing the application appreciated me helping to explain and keep residents calm but informed. I routinely reminded folks to not take it out too much on the NRCB staff as they were very underfunded and spread thin. My community overwhelmed me with gratitude but also pleas to help provide information so they may apply for impacted status.
I keep joking there’s so much drama, CBC is bound to make a mini-series, or if nothing else we’ll make Sundance winning film.
The AOPA doesn't just affect my community, it effects all Albertans.
Environment destroying feedlots have gotten away by disguising themselves as agriculture for far too long. The main objective in our county is to preserve agriculture land because it provides environmental and aesthetic benefits. Feedlots do not require productive farmland, the pollution from them destroys productive farmland and water. Most of the agriculture community doesn't understand what this is because the feedlots hide behind agriculture language. In our County, I would assume approximately 80% of the livestock agriculture falls into a low impact class not regulated by the AOPA. Of the remaining 20% that do, probably 90% fall in Column 2 of the AOPA, which is usually family farms having small feedlots for fall calves, this is still pretty low risk and easy to mitigate. The Column 3 CFO’s can have anywhere from about 1,750 cows to infinity. They are all called “Intensive agriculture”, and Column 2 and Column 3 are both called CFOs. See how difficult that is to distinguish, much less comprehend the impacts?
Column 3 Feedlots are destroying agriculture and bad for our economy, land and future. Ever heard of “Cowspiracy”? This is what those documentaries are talking about. Massive feedlots cut corners on animal welfare, human health and environmental risk mitigation. They Convert “Good for Everyone” productive pasture and forest agriculture land into intensive cropland. They can grow government subsidized cereal crops, for big profits, buy insurance written-off damaged crops to feedlot cattle and the feedlot lobbyist get funds by the big chemical companies used in crops production. All that lobbying has made the AOPA the useless Act it is today, and allowed these commercial intensive operations to hide behind the farmers they hurt.
These poor sucker, traditional farmers are drowning in debt just trying to keep bills paid. The feedlots have destroyed the cow industry by making it a monopoly at the buyers end. Cargill and JBS hold the prices below value. This is not a commodities market as we saw during the pandemic, this is a monopoly. Traditional farmers try to hold out for a market increase that will never happen, eventually they have to pay bills, so they take a few losses. Bankrupt farms are liquidating good animals and adding to the supply of undervalued animals on the market. Suicide and mental health distress rates of farmers are skyrocketing around the world and Alberta is no different. Eventually, those farmers, maybe about 95% in my County have to either convert their environmentally beneficial pasture into environmentally destructive cropland and start their own animal-welfare-destroying feedlot to survive. Majority of farms are hurting because a feedlots low overheads are holding the prices down and nobody else can compete.
This conversion to cropland destroys productive Agriculture land, and reduces habitat for large mammals, causing more wildlife conflicts. Chemicals for crops destroy; soil nutrients, micro-biomes, invertebrate and insect populations and production assessment values drop. Shallow rooting monocultures and the incorporation of tilling in feedlot manure erode soils, reduces water holding capacity and contaminate surface and ground water. In my County, the West half is forested slopes running into sensitive, slow moving waters, mucket clams, river otters and fish eggs require low silt, slow moving water. The increased levels of land clearing and farm chemicals is depleting the water-ecosystems. Already, chemical run-off from Alberta’s Cropland and Feedlots reach Lake Winnipeg and destroy that aquatic ecosystem the same way it does Pigeon lake. Destruction to the environment and residents is far worse than Oil and Gas activity but there is still nothing to protect us and our representatives don't seem to understand. Meanwhile research and supports for forage production has been cut by Alberta Agriculture and research has been taken over by the chemical companies making the mess, further dominating the dialogue and spreading misinformation about the industry. We need to level the playing field for other farmers and increase overhead for feedlots by making them responsible for the damage they do.
In the face of climate-crisis, water hungry and polluting feedlots are going to push their way up the water producing slopes of Alberta. They have already put considerable pressure on Southern Alberta’s aquifers and the industry has taken no steps to recycle and clean water they use nor collect the GHGs they produce. In Alberta, agriculture has so many claims to water rights given their “first in line” status, that means water normally allocated for the environment is ever reduced to beyond thresholds that habitats need to survive. The ecological collapse is already evidenced in the Oldman River Watershed and cresting collapse with Pigeon lake. This UCP Alberta Government made fanciful promises of transitioning to better agriculture practices like “no-till” farming when Climate Policy was created. We can clearly see there is no plan in place for no-till farming ad tilling, aggravated by feedlots is encroaching into Alberta’s steep slopes, where their impacts increase exponentially.
Cows and Fish, Trout’s un-limited, Nature Conservancy, Nature Conservancy of Canada, Alberta Wilderness Association, Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation, Edmonton Area Land Trust, Battle River Watershed Alliance, Bow-River Basin Council, Livingston Land Owners, Ghost Wilderness Area, CPAWS, Pigeon Lake Watershed Association, Greenpeace, David Suzuki Foundation, Y2Y, Eco-justice, The Environmental Law Centre, Foothills Forage, West Central Forage, dept. of Fisheries, Health Canada and countless other Environmental Advocates, can all spend millions in funds and billions in hours trying to protect people and the environment but it is all undermined by the careless, cowardice management practices of Feedlots. All of the above causes have been fighting various aspects of impacts from feedlots for a while, and I hope this unites our efforts.
I would love it if anyone in this email would host our Petition, if you could help bring awareness to this, and if any Members of Parliament would help present our Petition and future Bill.
We, Undersigned Albertans, are officially petitioning Legislative Assembly to adopt Health and Environmental Impact Assessments and oversights for Column 3 Feedlots and to make distinguishable from traditional agriculture and clear to the public their impacts.
Changes to the AOPA we need;
Clear, different terminology other than; Agriculture, Intensive Agriculture, and calling smaller column 2 CFOs a clearly, distinguishably different name than a column 3 CFO to make it apparent to the public.
Automatic Health and Environmental Impact Assessments,
2 public consultations with a 75 day response period,
rules on interference with public engagement,
decommissioning budgets in trust,
remediation contingency of 15% the properties value in trust,
monitoring reporting by a third party consultant every spring,
automatic refusal if a neighbor falls within the impact radius,
not on land with slope greater than 5 %,
not requiring more pasture or forest to be converted to cropland,
rainwater harvesting technologies,
shade for livestock,
water release testing and approval prior to release,
sealed, manure bio-treatment plants and methane production for any facility over 10,000 head,
water treatment recovery/recycling for facilities over 10,000 head to lower groundwater demands,
to remain 15 km from any major navigable tributary or named lake,
to be prohibited from the headwaters or source of major watersheds,
to have dedicated engineered wetlands for the outfalls and surface run off,
yearly inspections of manure slurry pond liners and replacement of HDPE liners after they are emptied,
Just so everyone is aware, what we are doing protects traditional agriculture lands. Column 3 feed lots can have the minimum at the same time, 350+ cow finishers, 500+ feeders, 900+feeder calves to infinity. That's at least 1,750 to unlimited, once they have the approval to get into this class there is really no stopping them.
In addition, we ask for justice for the existing contamination and ask for support to enforce the largest fines under the Water Act and the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act and to revoke the existing approval for the feedlot. We request formal Critical Fish Habitat Protections on the spawning grounds of Pigeon Lake.
PLWA has given me permission to share this information, if anyone wanted to make clips for social media or the news, to help bring awareness you are welcome to it. If you agree with this letter, please send your own emails of support in to those Ministers, Members and Critics. Let the Non-profits and Media know you request their support in spreading awareness.
Down load and print off a copy of our petition and ask for signatures in blue or black pen and send them back to PLWA.
Here is the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institutes Phosphorus Map . It measures Phosphorus in Albertas soil. When you look over Feedlot alley near Lethbridge you can see all the Brown coloured cells which represent Feedlots. When you zoom in on Pigeon Lakes NW shore you can see the existing Feedlot and that is is the ONLY significant source of Phosphorus for the two contaminated creeks. https://esi-dev.maps.abmi.ca/#/e759f07c-9eb2-4d6b-8a7d-39b94ce15b8b
The science nerd in me, thought it would be fun to show the Phosphorous Impacted soil of a Feedlot I know I have personally called in and complained about near Reed Deer. I have complained 3-5 times in the past few years to NRCB, each time ending in “Education” by the NRCB to the Feedlot Operator. So here is a side by side of the street maps, with the feedlot in red. Then I overlay the Phosphorus Impacted maps. Then I Overlay the aerial photo from google maps, before I finally zoom right in on the feedlot. You can see how despite all the calls there is nothing the NRCB has done to protect Piper Creek. A creek several children in Red Deer play in and other livestock drink from downstream.
Now, how many feedlots could I find on Google Maps and see they are in violation of the NRCB AOPA setbacks or storage management rules? I could make a public contest and give prizes to all the people that find violations on Google maps and report it to the NRCB! I think we can prove the existing AOPA is flawed and ineffective. LOL
Then I over lay the Soil Phosphorous.....Then I zoom in on google maps where the Source of the Phosphorous is.......This is the feedlot that contaminates Piper creek and despite years of reports to the NRCB every rainfall eventthe creek is polluted again.Co-organisers (2)
Jeannette Hall
Organiser
Winfield, AB
Nicole Klatt
Co-organiser