From his Saanich yard, Dale Featherstone sees and smells a lot of stuff he says has no business being on a neighbouring property that is part of the Agricultural Land Reserve.
Featherstone, who has owned his Courtland Avenue home, near Camosun College’s Interurban campus, since 1984, is one of at least nine neighbours who say they are fed up with the noise and smell of piles of decomposing residential yard waste handled by the property’s owners, MacNutt Enterprises.
MacNutt Enterprises has a contract with Saanich to collect garden waste from the free drop-off at the Saanich municipal yard. How the company deals with it is making life miserable for homeowners who live near their soil operation, said Featherstone, adding he has to contend with a mini mountain of “rotting compost that smells like carrion or rotting garbage at times.”
MacNutt Enterprises could not be reached for comment.
The contract to collect the dropped-off garden waste requires MacNutt Enterprises to comply with bylaws, including those governing noise and hours of operation, said Paul Murray, Saanich chief administrative officer. “If they’re not, then we’ll have to revisit that and decide if we’re prepared to continue with that contract.”
The business and its lawyer, as well as Saanich bylaw and legal officials, had a “positive and productive” meeting on Oct. 30, Murray said, adding the company has indicated it’s willing to work on complying. “And we will be actively following up to make sure that they do. … We’re allowing them a bit of time to work on that.”
MacNutt Enterprises has been issued four tickets for bylaw offences, but Murray could not be specific about the infractions, fines or how much time it has to pay.
Featherstone said he saw Mayor Frank Leonard tell a television reporter that residents had received notification by email on Nov. 10 from Saanich regarding the results of the Oct. 30 meeting with the MacNutts.
“We called around and none of us have received any emails from Saanich on the 10th of November, so the mayor must be mistaken,” he said. “We want some open dialogue to find out what the heck is going on.”
Longtime Courtland Avenue homeowner Louise Beinhauer said she first emailed Saanich council in April 2012 about alleged violations on the property, and was contacted by a bylaw official. Beinhauer is still irked that the official advised her in an email that the best course of action might be to band together and initiate a civil nuisance action when it comes to odour, dust and noise issues.
She noted there are five parcels of adjacent lands owned by MacNutt Enterprises, but the focus of the residents’ complaints is 425 and 443 Hector Rd., which are in the Agricultural Land Reserve and have been owned by the company since the late 1990s or early 2000s.
“The unbearable continuous noise and smell from morning to night, six days a week, has heavily impacted our lives in the most negative way,” Sonja Featherstone said in a statement.
Residents say that along with doing soil mixing, the multi-purpose MacNutt operation processes concrete and grinds asphalt.
The residents held a news conference on Wednesday and noted police have been called numerous times after hours to investigate complaints of noise and smell. “The fire department has been out here to put out the garden-waste-pile fire on two occasions that we know of,” the statement said.
Residents asked why MacNutt Enterprises has been awarded the contract for yard- and garden-waste removal, given neighbours’ concerns.
