Greenhouse growers fight bylaw requiring them to dim their lights

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If Canadian consumers want to enjoy year-round Canadian-grown produce then they’re going to have to put up with some occasional light in the night skies above agricultural greenhouses growing that food.

That’s the argument likely to be put before a provincial board set to hold hearings on Leamington’s recently enacted municipal bylaw restricting overnight light pollution escaping from local greenhouse operations. The Town of Kingsville, also responding to complaints from farm neighbours, recently enacted its own light-abatement bylaw for agricultural operations within its boundaries.

Great Lakes Greenhouses Inc., a 118-acre hydroponic cucumber grower in Leamington that prides itself on its conservation and food safety efforts, is challenging the town’s bylaw before Ontario’s Normal Farm Practices Protection Board (NFPPB). A hearing has been set for two weeks starting July 12.

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Leamington’s Greenhouse Light Amendment Bylaw, approved by town council in December following Kingsville’s lead, gave growers until April 1 to install sidewalls and end walls, with enforcement of ceiling curtain requirements to begin Oct. 1. The bylaw calls for curtains up and complete greenhouse closure from one hour before sunset to one hour after sunrise, except between 2 and 6 a.m. when the ceiling curtains must be 90-per cent closed. If that can’t be done, the lights have to be switched off.

“We’ve been working feverishly on this,” said Joe Sbrocchi, general manager of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers. “They want 100 per-cent closure and we can’t do it, we won’t do it — it will kill the plants.”

Local greenhouses, growing primarily tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, now operate year-round, and Sbrocchi said the lights are essential during “the lighting season” — about the end of November to late March — to “trick the plants into thinking we have long days.” He said the growers want to be good citizens and work with the municipalities but that the current bylaw goes too far.

“The municipality will argue back that it’s negatively affecting the residents in our community,” said Mayor Hilda MacDonald, adding the bylaw was in response to large numbers of citizen complaints.

MacDonald hopes the normal farm practices panel, comprised mainly of provincial appointees from the agricultural sector, can help the two sides “find something in the middle.”

dschmidt@postmedia.com

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