County looking into alternatives for confined feeding facilities

By Justin Seward
Cypress County Coun. Dustin Vossler brought forth the idea of whether or not to amend the  Land Use Bylaw for confine feeding operation start-ups at the July 4 regular meeting.
“I just figure it would give us a little bit of control over where they are placed,” said Vossler.
“It’s either look at going that way or maybe look at changing the way of exclusions. I don’t like the idea of building these in populated areas. I think they’re always welcome to build them in hard irrigation districts. Why not put out on the edge where there’s not population? It’s starting to really  bother me and bother a lot of people in mine and Richard’s (Oster) area and it keeps popping up over and over again.”
Cypress County’s planning supervisor, Jeffrey Dowling, said there are two ways the situation can go, including the municipal development plan having exclusions as to where confined feeding operations can be built in the county.
This option would allow for municipal development plan to be amended and build that into a plan that states that it would be prohibited to build a plant in certain areas.
The second option Dowling touched on was similar to Vossler’s recommendation of accrediting any specific land use district for confined feeding operations and go to a public hearing just the same way the luminated greenhouses and how the district was changed for those.
“I’m not disagreeing with what Dustin’s saying,” said Coun. LeRay Pahl.
“We need as much as we can get in this area to feed livestock. I don’t care whether it’s sheep  or pigs. We need industry in this part of the world to keep agriculture growing.”
Council voted to direct administration to bring back with more information to the next meeting on July 18.

Electoral boundaries
Council moved to provide a written submission to the Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission requesting Cypress County be kept within one electoral division , connected with neighbouring municipalities towards Brooks.

Speed limit to be reduced on White and Black Trail bridge
Due to the deterioration of the White and Black Trail Bridge, council voted to direct administration to draft a bylaw to lower the speed limit on the bridge to 50 km/hour. The bridge is located almost 3 km south of Township Road 120.

Irvine and District Agriculture Society Security Project
The recreation grant process was presented to the recreation board on April 18, 2017. However after the grant was issued, an incident occurred at the Irvine Recreation complex, where the agricultural society felt more security was needed.
Council moved to approve the funding requests of $24, 096 for the project that will be funded by the 2017 Irvine Recreation Complex operating allocation.