"Noses that know" turn in research on hog barns

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

For 700 days over the last two years, professional sniffers—also known as the “Nasal Rangers”—rode tall in their truck seats, testing the air and sniffing out potential problems with the intensive livestock operations near Good Spirit Lake and the surrounding communities. Their mission: to sniff out offensive odours that could be coming from the nearby operations, from as close as half a kilometre to as far away as six kilometres.

What the hired noses, as well as the other community residents asked to participate, found was that there was not much to smell. “This is a good news story,” says Don Walters with the Spirit Creek Watershed Monitoring Committee (SCWMC). “This is about good management, government and community groups forming regulations that are good for the environment and the rural economy. We can all work together.”

Walters should know about working together, after spending the last five years involved with the SCWMC. He says the committee was initially formed because residents were concerned about what hog barns operating in the area might bring with them. “Some of us weren’t in favour of hog barns at the start,” says Walters. “We knew nothing, though, and we learned a lot.”

Over the last five years, the SCWMC worked with residents, Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food, and the barn owners to collect baseline data on their community before the barns even went into production. The SCWMC then monitored water and soil quality in the area surrounding the barns, testing for any contaminants and even just unpleasant smells. They hired “Nasal Rangers,” who, along with local residents, made up the sniff-test team. “They’d have to get up in the morning and calibrate their noses,” jokes Walters. “That creates the standard for odour monitoring.”

The SCWMC’s five-year report found that some odour was detected two per cent of the time. Out of that portion, 60 per cent of odours reported were rated as a level one or two on a scale of one to five, with one being the least offensive.

The monitoring also yielded some surprising – and important – results about local drinking water: it needed attention regardless of whether hog barns were established in the area. Before the operation began, residents were asked to test their drinking water, with the results staying confidential. “We realized there were some water concerns,” said Walters, “which is a good thing, because the people didn’t realize it themselves. They’d been drinking it for years.”

The SCWMC will continue to test the soil around the operations for the next six years. Walters says overly wet and rainy seasons over the last couple of years may have affected some of the testing they have been doing, so the group just wants to continue testing to make sure there are no adverse affects. Water testing at Good Spirit Creek (which feeds into Good Spirit Lake) will also continue.

As for the hog barns, Walters says, in the end, they have made the communities of Rama and Buchanan very happy. “We found it’s good for the rural economy, and people are happy working there. It kept people here and provided jobs.”

Walters says, besides the satisfaction of knowing their communities are working hand-in-hand with the barns to keep their environment clean, they have some home-grown information to go on. “This has given us some very good information that’s not from down south, or Denmark, or wherever.”

The local information also serves Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food. “Our livestock producers are good stewards of the environment and the report confirms this fact,” says Agriculture and Food Minister Mark Wartman. “Growing Saskatchewan’s livestock industry is key to stimulating the province’s rural economy.”

The full results and a copy of the report are available on the SCWMC website at http://spiritcreek.ca.

For more information, contact:

Don Walters
Spirit Creek Watershed Monitoring Committee
Phone: (306) 783-4828
E-mail: rwalters@sasktel.net
Website: http://spiritcreek.ca