Sparks fly over Huron County severance
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
by SUSAN MANN
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture is considering launching an Ontario Municipal Board appeal of a Huron County Council Committee of the Whole severance decision that created a non-farm rural residential lot in a prime agricultural area.
The request of Robert Vodden and Joanne Palmer to sever about 1.47 acres from the corner of a farm parcel on Concession 3 in East Ward (Hullett) in Central Huron was given provisional consent subject to seven conditions by the committee on May 11. Some of the conditions include matters dealing with numbering and addressing the property for 911 purposes, and the need for a survey and rezoning.
Neil Currie, federation general manager, says the decision allowing creation of the lot is contrary to the Provincial Policy Statement, “which we agreed with in terms of use of agricultural lands.”
The federation is looking at “what’s required for the appeal right now,” Currie says. The deadline for filing an Ontario Municipal Board appeal is June 6.
Peter Jeffery, federation senior farm policy researcher, says the federation’s land use policy statement has an opposition to residential development in prime agricultural areas because of impacts on surrounding agricultural uses. “There would be potential impacts on establishing or expanding livestock facilities on the farms adjacent to the residential lot because the minimum distance separation formulas would be applied.”
Depending on the distance between the house on the lot and the barn or manure storage on adjacent farms, there could be constraints or restrictions on livestock use of the adjacent properties, he says.
Huron County planner Susanna Reid says the county’s planning department recommended the application be denied because it doesn’t conform to the Provincial Policy Statement, the county’s Official Plan or the Central Huron Official Plan. None of these planning documents permit the creation of a non-farm residential lot, she says. Central Huron Council recommended the application be approved with conditions.
Huron County Council committee of the whole chair Bill Dowson, also the Mayor of Bluewater, says the provincial statement, the official plans and the planning department’s recommendations are all guidelines for councilors to follow. But in the end sometimes it makes sense to make decisions that don’t follow staff recommendations.
Dowson says this matter has been discussed since last September. “If we don’t take a look at our rural areas and we just turn everything down and leave it strictly as what it could turn into we are going to turn our community into just industrial type farming with no rural connection.”
Dowson says he strongly supports severances with the understanding both farmers and rural residents have to work together and be respectful of each other if they’re going to save rural life. “If we don’t protect our rural areas and get some people living on the concessions and the side roads, we will have no need to keep the roads up because there won’t a good enough tax base. We won’t have a tax base.”
It says on the provincial agriculture ministry’s website the minimum distance separation (MDS) formulae is a land use planning tool used to determine a recommended separation distance between a livestock barn or manure storage and another land use. MDS doesn’t account for other nuisances, such as noise or dust.
The 2005 Provincial Policy Statement requires new land uses in rural and prime agricultural areas, including the creation of lots and new or expanding livestock facilities, to comply with the MDS formulae.
Currie says municipalities’ decisions have to be consistent with the Provincial Policy Statement and “we see this as inconsistent and that would be the nature of our appeal.”
Reid says there weren’t any objections to the severance application either from surrounding landowners or anyone else. Since the county’s committee of the whole made its decision approving the severance, Dowson says he hasn’t heard from anyone objecting to its decision.
About the MDS, Reid says the vacant lot itself doesn’t create an MDS buffer but if there was a house built on the lot it would. Reid says there are plans to build a house on the lot.
In a 2010 Huron County planning department study requested by two councilors, planners concluded the number of possible rural residential lots in Huron County is 9,500. The study was undertaken to assess the number and effect of rural severances similar to the lot requested in the Vodden/Palmer application.
“On an individual basis this type of development may seem harmless but as a policy permitting scattered rural residential lots across the county the ramifications are significant,” it says in the study.
A common belief is any increase in assessment will lower overall taxes. That may be true in specific circumstances and for specific land uses but “it does not necessarily hold true for scattered residential development,” the study adds.
The study concluded that the number of non-farm residential lots that could be created in the agricultural area is significant “with respect to sheer numbers, effects on agricultural flexibility and competition for settlement area lots.”
In addition, the disadvantages of scattered residential development are greater than the advantages. “This finding is consistent with the rationale of Huron County’s 40 years of policy protecting agriculture and directing development to settlement areas,” it says in the study. “Any severance that opens the door to this type of development should not be approved.” BF