PETERBOROUGH — The Peterborough County Landowners Association has asked its county council to dump the local conservation authority and take over their responsibilities.

In a presentation to council March 3, the local landowners association president Tony Kenny, a maple syrup producer, said that according to the Conservation Authorities Act, two-thirds of the member municipalities need to meet and two-thirds present would need to vote to dissolve the municipality.

The 200-member landowners’ association is fed up with the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority, charging that the authority is expensive and oppressive.

The landowners join a chorus of groups across the province with similar complaints. Three townships in the past six months, including South Stormont Township, east of Chesterville, have asked the province to conduct an audit of their local conservation authority. Several other municipalities are seeking ways to dissolve their CAs.

"The CAs have outlived their original mandate," Kenny said, noting that conservation authorities came into being to handle flood events after Hurricane Hazel in 1954 when "most municipalities had little or no planning." Today, however, "this can easily and economically be administered by municipal planning and building staff," he said.

Spending is out of control, Kenny said. Otonobee Region Conservation Authority’s municipal levies have doubled in seven years to almost $900,000, Kenny said.

The last straw for the landowners, however, occurred when 92-year-old Cliff Tripp was ordered by the conservation authority to pay for an environmental impact study before he could get a permit to build a house on his land, which had houses on two sides, Kenny said. Tripp does not need a study, which could cost more than the value of the land, he said, adding that the Conservation Act and planning officials agree that the conservation authority overstepped its authority.