A member of Lakeshore Council does not believe the municipality is ready to support greenhouse developments.
Ward 6 councillor Linda McKinlay will introduce a Notice of Motion during Tuesday's Council meeting that calls on the municipality to oppose large commercial greenhouses.
The motion detail a number of reasons for the direction including public opposition to the idea, inadequate infrastructure related to traffic and water to accommodate the greenhouse Industry, the municipality having insufficient resources to accommodate and enforce required regulatory compliance, and a lack of frontline expertise to assess the potential impacts of greenhouses on the environment when it comes to light and air pollution.
McKinlay says the core of her motion is that Lakeshore is not ready to support greenhouses.
"We need some regulations, we need some bylaws, we need a sense of direction of where greenhouses fit in Lakeshore, and we have none of that in place," she says.
The motion also asks that the municipality requests that large commercial greenhouses be reclassified as industrial use, a move that would change the way those operations are taxed.
McKinlay says greenhouses are still a form of farming as far of taxes go.
"When you put a greenhouse in place and take all that land out of regular farming, you then have, in Leamington's case, thousands of trucks going on the roads, which is support by all the residents and not the greenhouse industry. You have major infrastructure issues," she says.
McKinlay points out they have nothing to support the wear and tear on the roads from trucks going to the greenhouses or even the water supply issues.
"We get the same taxes whether is a farm is corn stalks or a greenhouse," she says. "Frankly, we need a better tax base to support greenhouses in our municipality."
Greenhouse operations are considered by the Ministry Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs as a farm use, so under provincial regulations it would be difficult for the municipality to ban them.
Lakeshore has been studying issues around allowing greenhouses within the municipality and potential regulations for the industry before a March 2023 deadline. That's when an interim control bylaw banning greenhouse development is set to expire.
In late August, Chatham-based Storey Samways Planning presented a 41-page study which examined aspects such as light and odour pollution, the financial impact of the greenhouse industry, environmental impacts, and even employee housing issues.
The study laid out a number of constraints that would need to be addressed for greenhouse development to move forward including municipal water and sewage systems.