Comber resident trying to keep greenhouses out of Lakeshore

Jill Miner, a fourth-generation grain farmer has started a petition to get more residents to speak out against the idea of greenhouse development.

“Have a voice and make sure that our municipality knows that the people living in it or surrounding it aren’t wanting this to happen,” Miner tells CTV News in an interview Tuesday.

“I realize we need it for our economy, but the destruction of the land they'll never be able to get that land back to its original state should the greenhouse industry decline,” says Miner.

Miner says she wouldn’t sell her land to a greenhouse company but she is worried her neighbours might, and then she’d be surrounded by greenhouses.

She started a petition, both paper form and online, to encourage residents to participate in one of the town hall meetings about the Lakeshore Greenhouse Study.

Miner admits she is against the industry as a whole because she fears it means the end of her way of life.

“We're going to be dealing with corporations. And a corporation basically is doing it to increase the bottom line. They're not concerned about the people living there,” says Miner.

She plans to attend both upcoming Town Hall meetings.

One is scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 23, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Atlas Tube Centre.

A second one will be held Thursday Sept. 1 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Comber Community Centre.

“We're aware that there is a petition underway right now,” says corporate leader of growth and sustainability for the Municipality of Lakeshore Tammie Ryall. “Certainly we welcome their input.”

In a phone interview Tuesday, Ryall tells CTV News the study is the next step in a process that started back in 2019, when council asked for information about the “nuisance effects of light pollution.”

Ryall says the study scope was broadened “to look at all the effects, or potential effects of greenhouse development in Lakeshore.”

“We're trying to be proactive through this study to be ready if we do have proposals come forward for large scale greenhouse operations.”

Storey Samways Planning of Chatham prepared the 41-page document, which deals with everything from light and odour pollution to the financial impact of the greenhouse industry.

The report does not, however, make a determination one way or the other, if Lakeshore should get into the greenhouse industry.

With so much land zoned agricultural, Ryall says it would be “difficult” to ban the industry outright.

“We are looking for different tools to regulate it,” says Ryall.

The study is now available for residents and stakeholders to read online.

The town will be accepting comments on it until Sept. 6 and then administration will present a final report to council at their meeting on Oct. 11.

Ryall says it’s up to council to decide how the municipality moves forward with regulating the greenhouse industry, if at all.

The clock is ticking however because the town’s interim control bylaw, prohibiting greenhouse development, expires in March 2023.