Not everyone came away from last week's Foothills County biodigester meeting as positive as Reeve Delilah Miller.

Laurene Mitchell lives on the Coal Trail about a kilometer from the site of the proposed renewable natural gas plant.

She came away from the meeting very disappointed.

"I expected the presentation to be very similar to what landowners had given to us on Jan. 12, but I certainly expected to see some of the Tidewater staff in attendance personally and was very upset when they decided to just come virtually, and also the biggest part of our disappointment was the fact that we had no answers to our questions that we had submitted on January 18th as per the county's request," she says. 

They were not going to allow any questions in the meeting, so I submitted them as per their request and we had zero answers."

Mitchell says many people don't realize just how big the plant is going to be.

"It's going to be 100 acres, actually 98 to be exact and some of the structures are going to be huge. For instance, there are going to be four biodigester tanks, each 120 feet in diameter and 38 feet tall, I believe seven feet of those will be dug into the ground and the manure blend building that is 250 feet long by 150 feet wide, a flare stack and of course other buildings as well."

She says concerns about the 24-acre liquid digestate pond also haven't been addressed.

While the company says the biodigester will reduce odours from the feedlot by about 42 per cent Mitchell wonders how they're able to measure that and if the reduction simply won't be offset by the uncovered biodigestate pond.

There are also worries about how waterfowl will be kept off the pond.

She and her husband have had an assessment done on their property and will have another done if the project gets approved to determine just how badly it will impact their property value, which she's been told by a realtor will be significant.

Foothills county reeve Delilah Miller had said even if the project gets denied, Rimrock, and the smells associated with it will still be there.

Mitchell says they've lived in the area back to when it was Western Feedlot, and this proposal is twice as large as what's there now.

She hopes if it is denied the Natural Resources Conservation Board can monitor and enforce the rules around cleaning pens and looking after the facility to keep odours to a minimum.

In the end, Mitchell says it's an industrial plant being proposed for an agricultural area and doesn't fit.

Funds are being raised through a gofundme page to appeal the decision if Alberta Environment and the NRCB allow it to proceed.

She encourages people to go to the website stopthatsmell.ca and the facebook page High River Are You Sick of the Smell.