Man Suing City of Surrey over Blueberry Cannons

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.

Surrey Leader still not being delivered

Its been over a month (January 6) since I last received a Surrey Leader.

Not that I particularly care all that much other than the fact the paper is probably publishing current events about what is happening at Holland Park, the free events we can attend while the Olympics is on. I wouldn't mind reading about that.

I miss getting the Cloverdale Reporter which is slipped inside the Friday edition of the Surrey Leader.

For people in Cloverdale who are also inbetween carriers in their neighborhood, the Cloverdale Reporter's building is on 56A Avenue, just a little west of 176th Street. They have a stand outside their office during business hours and a newspaper can be picked up there.

Oh well, I have dogs to walk in that general direction anyway.

Shoddy delivery for the Leader in Cloverdale

Following up my other post about the Surrey Leader, I have a few things to say about their sketchy delivery. And here I can’t fully blame the Leader. They must have a dickens of a time keeping delivery people employed because we keep getting notices in our mailbox that they’re looking for delivery people in our area. Sometimes weeks and months will go by without getting a newspaper, so that’s why I’m not too certain how many days a week its really delivered. I know its supposed to come on Fridays, with the Cloverdale Reporter inside, but it rarely arrives in my mailbox. Not that I care so much whether or not I receive the Leader, but I do like reading the Reporter because its style is more like how the Leader used to be many years ago covering community events and people who live in Cloverdale.

We had one good delivery person, a man in his thirties, this past summer. We regularly got the papers. But then he quit. Hopefully he found better work elsewhere and delivering the Leader was just a temporary situation for him. He was reliable, which is a whole lot more than I can say about any of the others. In the past couple of years there was one lazy sucker who’d deliver multiple copies of the Leader to my house. How many newspapers can I read? I just assumed he got paid by the paper and it was easier for him to dump multiple copies to some of his houses to make his route go faster. I stuck them in my recycle box. And then one day the delivery person, and I’m sure it was a kid, really ticked me off. In the summer we have designated days of the week and times we can run the sprinkler. I went outside and set the sprinkler in my front yard. From where it was set up, it was also getting our sidewalk inbetween the garden and house wet, including the area around the front door. When I came outside an hour and a half later to move the sprinkler, I had several soaking wet copies of the Leader sitting on my front doorstep. Now that kid had to run through the sprinkler in order to get the papers to that spot, so there’s no doubt in my mind that he knew the sprinkler was on. He could see it going back and forth, and the sidewalk and front door were wet. He could have put the newspapers in my driveway, four feet away from my front door. That area was dry, not being reached by the sprinkler. But no. He has to put multiple copies of the Leader on my front door mat. What a nasty, soggy mess. I picked it up and took it right to the recycle bin, only to discover that wet newsprint runs and marks up your hands and your clothes. I complained to the Leader about that. One soggy newspaper would have been bad enough, but a stack of them was another story.

That’s the only complaint I’ve made. Ever since then I’ve only received one copy of the paper delivered to my house. I don’t complain about not receiving the papers. This is one case where its better not to receive.

But what happens to the copies of the Leader that don’t get delivered? Its possible there is currently no delivery person in the area during that time. It seems the Leader goes through 5 or 6 delivery people a year in my neighborhood. I see a lot of things when I’m out walking my dogs. Over the years I’ve seen bundles of the Leader dumped in local ditches, in the alley that runs east and west between 177B and 179th Streets, behind 59th Avenue, in Cloverdale Creek, off 57 Avenue, close to 173 Street, and in the dumpster when I lived in Dogwood Gardens. Its very clear that the people who are getting paid per paper they deliver are finding it easier to dump them in mass quantities somewhere. I’m sure nobody complains that they’re not receiving the Leader.

Once again my copies of the Surrey Leader and Cloverdale Reporter that should have been delivered yesterday didn’t arrive. Though I did get the Leader this past Wednesday.

Hit or miss. That the delivery style of the Surrey Leader.