A well-known southern Alberta cattle feeding operation has been handed a reprimand over its composting work.
Tongue Creek Feeders, which keeps three composting sites northwest of High River, has been given an enforcement order from the provincial environment department over “non-compliance” with regulations governing compost facilities.
The operation, owned by the Morrison family of High River, was “exceeding authorized volumes of waste in their facilities and accepting waste types other than those stipulated” in the provincial code of practice for compost facilities, the province said in a release Thursday.
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Tongue Creek “was also working without an operations plan and failed to report contraventions in their operations,” the province said.
Under the province’s compliance order, Tongue Creek “must develop and implement a comprehensive groundwater monitoring plan, prepare operations plans for all three facilities, submit an odour and dust mitigation plan, and provide monthly data of the waste streams for all three facilities.”
The Morrisons, well known in the province’s ranching community, were also known in the 1990s for developing EcoAg Initiatives, an operation to create useable farm fertilizer from composted cattle manure.
Tongue Creek later found itself at the centre of a debate over workplace safety regulations for farm workers, after the 2006 death of an employee trying to clear hung-up grain in a silo.
A provincial court judge overseeing the inquiry into Kevan Chandler’s death recommended in 2009 that the province lift the exemption that excludes farms’ paid workers from provincial workplace safety regulations.
The judge’s recommendation came about eight months after the death of Brian Morrison, one of the feedlot’s owners, in a fall from a silo on the farm.
