Page 3 - May 11, 2017

Thursday, May 11, 2017
Too wet to plant in Lambton
The Independent Staff
The Independent
Page 3
Lambton County farmers will likely have more than a week’s wait before planting this year’s corn crop.
“One of the worst mistakes that farmers can make after a wet, wet period... is jumping the gun,” he says.
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That from Lambton Grain Farmers director Kevin Marriott.
Marriott is also concerned that
with so much water in the clay, if the weather turns hot and dry, the corn will not do well.
Over the last week, about 75 millimetres of rain has fallen in Lambton County. That’s ve more millimetres than what normally falls in the entire month of May.
The winter wheat seems to have weathered most of the rain, Marriott says. There are patches, which are bare because of the rains this winter, but what is in the elds is struggling but could do okay with the right weather conditions at the right time. “It de nitely will not be as good as last year (which was a record crop) but it will be better than average.”
Marriott says the ground is saturated and the forecast calls for a number
of cooler days ahead with more rain Saturday.
“It will be at least a full week here before we start planting– I would consider spraying this weekend, but tilling won’t happen until next week.”
Over 75 mm of rain fell in one week in Lambton ooding elds like this one on Marthaville Road near Petrolia.
That’s a long-time to wait since, for optimal yield, Marriott says, the corn should be in the ground by May 10.
A window of opportunity
No tax break this year for Lambton farmers
Heather Wright
By 2020, the OFA says farm properties will be carrying 7.99 per cent of the tax burden, $8,728,000 more than in 2012.
value has increased about 18 per cent that 2.39 county increase becomes more like 9.75 per cent.
The Independent
Farmer won’t see a reduction in their tax rate this year.
Marriott adds that a 2.39 per cent increase in Sarnia will become a 1.1 per cent increase showing how the tax burden is moving from the urban areas to the rural areas.
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“It’s about time.”
That from a leader of WAIT (We’re Against Industrial Turbine) after the two former owners of the Cedar Point Wind Energy Centre and a contractor it hired have been charged under the Environmental Protection Act.
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In 2015, a swath of trees in a provincially-signi cant wetland were removed - in error according to the companies - as they prepared to erect 42 wind turbines in Plympton- Wyoming and Lambton Shores.
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Suncor planned to remove the
trees, but altered the plan after the Ministry of the Environment said it was a provincially-signi cant woodlot. However, the contractor in charge of preparing the ground work for the wind centre got the wrong plan, and 3,000 square metres of trees were cut.
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The companies worked with the St. Clair Region Conservation Authority on a remediation plan and some new trees have been planted in the area.
Sarnia court on May 5 and will return July 14.
their part and I don’t think they could have left it alone. It would have been too egregious of an oversight to let that happen.”
Then, on April 3, AMEC Foster Wheeler Americas Limited, Cedar Point II GP Inc. and Suncor Energy Products Inc. were each charged for failing to comply with a condition
of a renewable energy approval by removing vegetation and/or woodland during the construction of the Cedar Point wind farm in 2015.
Santo Giorno of WAIT has been following the issue and was one of the rst to document the problem by taking photos of the scene.
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Giorno isn’t surprised by the charges either. “It was a very blatant error on
Lambton’s treasurer analysed
the numbers and found what most councillors expected - shifting some of the tax burden from farmland would add taxes to residential, commercial and industrial properties.
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Erickson’s
Recently, The Ontario Federation
of Agriculture asked councillors to consider a cut in the tax rate charged to farmland from 0.25 to 0.22. Farmers across the province saw the value of their land skyrocket - some as high
as 70 per cent. In Lambton County,
the average assessment increase on farmland was 18 per cent. That brings with it more taxes to pay. The OFA
is concerned the burden of taxes is shifting to the province’s farmland saying in 2016, farm properties paid about 5.4 per cent of the total tax bill
- up from about 3.54 per cent in 2012.
WAIT pleased charges laid after trees cut for wind farm
The Independent Staff
John Innes says changing the farm tax rate would result in about $465,000 being shifted to homeowners, industries and businesses and would have little impact on individual taxes.
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But Enniskillen Mayor Kevin Marriott says county councillors didn’t understand the full impact of the tax numbers.
“It was a real shock to me when
we gured it out,” says Marriott. He believes before county councillors pass the budget, they should be looking at how each municipality is affected by the tax increase they are passing along.
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He says for a farmer whose land
“Every little bit helps,” he says.”
The mess le behind a er trees were cut near the Cedar Point Wind Centre in
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He says “it’s about time” charges were laid in the incident. “I’m glad they didn’t just let this lie and that they are going to hold the companies accountable for their actions.”
A nearby private landowner also cut trees illegally at that time. County of Lambton of cials say about one acre of trees was removed in 2015. After an investigation by the county, the landowner agreed to pay $6,000 in compensation for the act – the highest amount any landowner has paid to remove trees in the county.
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If the county would have agreed
to lower the farmland tax rate, the increase in the rural area would have been around 6.8 per cent according to Marriott.
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