There is an article in the Cloverdale Reporter about a Cloverdale resident suing the City of Surrey over failure to conrol the noise from the propane cannons in the blueberry fields, namely the ones in the vicinity of Highway 10 and 168th Street.
Click here for the full article.
This fellow has been one of the more vocal opponents of the noise from the blueberry cannons and he is suing Surrey over their inaction to enforce their own bylaws. I can see how he has a point. Those cannons aren't supposed to be firing between noon and 3pm and I hear them pretty much every day during this time period.
On the other hand the city bylaw officers have to be reasonable people. They can go out to a farm once they've received a complaint and maybe someone will be home maybe not. Though I would think during berry picking season there would be people around. The bylaws officers remind the farm owner of the city's noise bylaws but they want to be nice about it and just inform them of the violation and ask them to comply in the future. That's all it takes. They don't need to be nasty and hand out fines. So whether the bylaw officers are following up on complaints I don't know. I'm sure they keep a log book of their calls and incident reports that they'll have to produce in court.
The thing is I've been hearing those propane cannons in the blueberry fields since 1974. That was when I lived up on the hill on 182 Street. The cannons I heard were on 168th Street and 160th Street and Colebrook Road areas so they can be heard some distance away. I'd say I was living in Cloverdale before blueberry farming even started in the area and before propane cannons came into use and you don't hear me complaining about it even though I was here first. Its just a fact of life when you live in a farming community. Farmers got to do what they got to do to protect their crops. If some farmers think buying or renting propane cannons to scare away the birds works for them then more power to them.
I'm in the camp that believes the birds get used to the noise after awhile and stick around munching on blueberries. That's been my observation since the mid-70's. The best devices to deter birds are nets or predatory birds like hawks. However nets are costly to put up and the nets make it nearly impossible for a farmer to use a blueberry picker machine.
The article says the man suing the city lives in the area of 168th Street and Highway 10. Most of the houses in that area are new. And when I say new I mean built after 1975 long after the propane cannons in the blueberry fields had been established. Certainly some of the houses in this area, the small acreages on Highway 10 and a few houses up 168th Street and some of the offshoot streets have been there since before I was born but the majority of the houses in this area were built after the blueberry fields had been established in Cloverdale. The Cowtown development between 168th Street and 172 Street, roughly between 58th and 60th Avenues was built in the late 70's. The houses west of 168th Street are still being built in those new subdivisions.
It seems unreasonable that anyone who has purchased a house in this area of Cloverdale since after 1970 didn't look around and see there were farms south of Highway 10 in the 168th Street vicinity and figure out that with farms might come unpleasant odors or noise.
Location, location people.
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