Yankee Flats residents say they want to enact change after experiencing what they claim has been years of foul odours coming from the Spa Hills composting facility

“Some residents are experiencing headaches and runny noses, feeling nauseous, the odour has just been extra strong the last couple months,” said resident Deneen Tomlinson.

Tomlinson is one of the organizers behind an online fundraiser launched to help cover the cost of legal challenges directed at the Columbia Shuswap Regional District and the Ministry of Environment over an alleged lack of enforcement.

As of the time of writing, the GoFundMe has raised more than $1,700, more than 60 per cent of the stated goal of $2,800.

Along with complaints about bad odours, residents have claimed rotten meat has been dropped on their properties from scavenging birds. They said they have also identified signs of environmental contamination.

“We'll be outside and I'll be doing my horses, and there'll be a full flock of crows flying around my property,” said local resident Brittany Moore. “And they're wrestling over a piece of meat that gets dropped in my yard.”

Moore said she gets a headache and a runny nose from the odour, and the cold winter weather offers no reprieve.

“We're locked inside our house, and guess what? You can't even open a window because the smell is in your house for hours,” Moore said.

Residents said complaints to the CSRD about the Spa Hills Compost have fallen on deaf ears. In a presentation to the board of directors in April 2024, residents threatened legal action if nothing was done about the facility.

Tomlinson said residents have also reached out to the Agricultural Land Commission without any real results.

“It's just all very vague, and everyone seems to say it falls on the Ministry of Environment,” she said. “So we've kind of taken worrying about our environment in our own hands.”

New bylaw requested, turned down

At a Nov. 24 CSRD board meeting, directors received a letter from lawyer Angela McCue on behalf of Silver Creek and Yankee Flats area residents asking the district to draft a compost facility bylaw.

Director Dean Trumbley, who represents the Yankee Flats area, urged the board to consider the request, but CSRD staff advised against writing a bylaw as it was unclear how it would be effectively enforced.

Further discussion about the issue was halted as the board agreed to move the conversation to a closed-door meeting.

Tomlinson said she believes the facility is out of compliance with CSRD’s bylaw 2500, which pertains to land use in Salmon Valley.

The bylaw, which went into effect in 2014, sets out the zoning regulations for operating a composting facility. It stipulated an area primarily for composting and curing can not exceed 500 square metres per parcel.

“They've far exceeded that footprint,” Tomlinson said, claiming the facility has now applied to the regional district for a bylaw amendment to allow a larger compost area.

Ministry warning letter was issued

In September, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy issued a warning letter to Spa Hills Farm Inc. due to the results of an inspection on July 16, 2024.

The letter found the facility to be out of compliance with Organic Matter Recycling Regulations on eight counts. The ministry instructed operators to take corrective actions within 30 days.

According to the letter, the facility was not in compliance when it came to storing residuals from the composting process in a way that limited vector attraction, which means keeping scraps secure from wildlife.

The warning letter also said the facility’s storage area lacked a leachate collection system and instead discharged liquids directly to ground. Leachate is a term used to describe the water traveling through composting material that can pick up harmful bacteria or pollutants.

The facility uses a 4,500 litre leachate collection system for the receiving, curing and processing areas, which collects the leachate for re-use during the composting process.

In the letter, the ministry noted a facility co-owner told the inspector they were building a lined pond for the storage area in order to store the leachate before it is recycled back into the composting process, but construction had not been completed at the time of inspection.

The Spa Hills facility also received a non-compliance advisory letter from the Ministry of the Environment based on an inspection that took place in January of 2024. The letter noted similar issues regarding vector attraction and a leachate collection solution for the storage area.

Castanet reached out to Josh Mitchell, Spa Hills Compost co-owner, but he declined to comment on the matter.

Tomlinson and Moore said they plan to make another presentation at a CSRD board meeting before potentially moving forward on legal action.

Castanet asked Trumbley for comment, but he did not respond by deadline.