CALGARY — First the filth, now the fury.

The rage stems from a metropolis 300-km away — but for a small group of residents living near a landfill in Coronation, Alberta, the City of Calgary couldn’t feel any closer.

They find bits of Calgary in their fences, ponds and fields: all of it garbage from the big city, trucked three hours to the local dump, only to be lifted by wind and scattered across their prairie properties.

“It’s noisy, it smells and it is unsightly, even when the garbage isn’t blowing around,” said rancher Bill Heidecker, whose land borders the landfill.

The dump was already an ongoing headache, says Heidecker, but finding out the landfill is about to expand was the final straw.

On Monday, Heidecker and about a dozen more Coronation-area landowners will go before county’s development appeal board armed with a petition signed by 225 people, and demands that the BFI Canada-run dump be denied an expansion permit.

The landfill, which opened in 1996 and was taken over by BFI some five years ago, currently handles up to 300,000 tonnes of waste a year, mainly collected through commercial contracts in Calgary, as well as some household waste from Edmonton.

Everyday, 32 BFI trucks from Calgary unload at the dump, along with a dozen or so from Edmonton.

It’s a long drive, but cheaper for BFI than paying the fees at Calgary’s own landfills — and this way, the County of Paintearth, where Coronation is located, can collect royalties on the dump.

That’s the bright side of having a major municipal dump in the midst of the picturesque prairies.

According to residents like Heidecker, the downside is downright disgusting.

“An incredible amount of garbage escapes from this landfill each year. Much of it lands on property we lease or own causing great inconvenience, risk (health, safety, and environment), expense, and frustration to us, our team, and our livestock,” reads a letter written to local media.

“Much of this trash continues on in the wind and comes to rest miles away in locations such as the Coronation cemetery, dam, campgrounds, golf course, and the yards of area residents.”

On Facebook and Twitter pages started by the same concerned residents, there are galleries and videos of windblown garbage, which they say comes directly from the BFI dump.

In a panorama video, scattered trash can be seen from horizon to horizon, while a photograph of a prairie pond shows the shoreline soggy with plastic bags and other assorted garbage.

“I’m so sick of the excuses — I’ve been hearing them for years and years,” said Heidecker.

“They say it’s a windstorm, and a windstorm blew down the fence, but wind is not an excuse. The fence is smaller than the height of the pile they dump on top of, and wind in this county is not a surprise.”

Trash, of course, attracts scavengers.

In his letter of appeal to the county, Heidecker describes vast flocks of hungry gulls, gorging on waste brought in from the big cities, and then fouling local fields and water with their waste.

“They have a serious gull problem,” he said.

No one from BFI or its parent company, Progressive Waste Solutions, was available to comment — a silence echoed at the county offices.

Ultimately, Heidecker says residents are not trying to get the current dump shut down — but until BFI starts to manage the current landfill in a way that doesn’t affect the people living nearby, no expansion should be allowed.

“We aren’t saying leave town, we’re saying this permit should stopped today, and if they can use their existing garbage cell to prove they can actually operate credibly, then maybe they can reapply.

“We know garbage has to go somewhere, but there’s no way in heck, that just because we’re a small group of people, we should have to bear the brunt of Calgary’s garbage and BFI’s incompetence.”