It's a neighbour so offensive to most residents in a quiet Acadian community, they have formed a citizen's group in opposition.

The group is known as the Poop Patrol and the neighbour is a huge pig farm in St. Marie, New Brunswick. Metz Farms has operated a barn here for three years, raising up to 10,000 feeder pigs at a time.

Feeder pigs are between 22 to 136 kilograms and ready for market. They are fed a lot in order to grow quickly. And a lot of feeding means a lot of waste.

The Poop Patrol spokesman, Jerry Cook says it's not just the smell from the barn that stinks. The manure is mixed with water and stored in an open-air lagoon to ferment. The only way to get rid of it is to spray it on nearby fields every six months.

Agriculture experts say the manure is great fertilizer, good as gold on farmers' fields. But the operation's proximity to the village makes neighbours worry that the fecal waste could contaminate their well water and rivers.

"You've got five and a half million gallons of untreated poop in a hole in the ground made out of dirt... What you get is ammonia, you get hydrogen sulfide, you get methane and there's another 160 organic chemicals that make up that toxic little soup," says Cook.

Experts estimate that all the pigs in Canada produce enough waste every 22 days to fill the entire Skydome in Toronto.

Pig manure doesn't have to go through a sewage treatment plant like human waste. It's potential to pollute shouldn't be underestimated, according to Burkhard Mausberg, executive director of Environmental Defence Canada.

"The real problem with pig manure is that it has 30 times the power to pollute surface water and drinking water than human waste. The way that they are bred and the way that they are kept and fed really quickly to grow produces more pathogens and produces more opportunity to pollute water."

The Canadian Pork Council could not tell W-FIVE how many of giant hog farms are operating in Canada. But for the pig farmer, bigger is better and more profitable. And there is a steady supply of farmers wanting to set up shop here.

Foreign farmers are being driven out of their countries by tough regulations and environmental restrictions. But while Quebec has put a hold on new pig farm operations, other provinces are inviting farmers from Europe, Asia and the United States.

Gunther Metz moved his farm to New Brunswick from Germany three years ago. Hans Kristensen manages the farm.

"Eleven years ago, the New Brunswick government had a recruiting campaign in Europe to attract farmers to come over to New Brunswick because we were losing our land base."

But in Germany when Metz tried to expand its farm, neighbours revolted. In fact, he said, "it was as if the whole village turned against me." In part, it's the reason why he moved to Canada and now the farm in New Brunswick is facing similar problems.

"There's a group of people here that are very adamantly opposed to our mere existence," says Kristensen.

Two years ago, frustration peaked. The community blocked one of the tanker trucks holding thousands of litres of liquid manure, provoking Metz Farms to take legal action.

"We were considered to have impeded the operation, impeded their opportunity to spread. An injunction and a lawsuit were laid against the community. It covers looking and watching," says Cook.

So now the Poop Patrol travels in pairs and packs a video camera. Since the injunction is so strict, just watching or even looking at the farm could land them in court.

The biggest worry for the people of St. Marie is their health. Maria Robichaud lives near the spray fields. Last year, she developed weeping sores in her ears and nose. This year, they wouldn't heal. So she visited her doctor.

"She looked at me and said, 'You must be working in chemicals all day long' and I said, 'No, I'm not," says Robichaud.

The diagnosis from her doctor was that she "has a history of significant chemical exposure from a pig farm two kilometres from her house."

Stories like this have prompted the Canadian Medical Association to take a stand. It passed a resolution this summer asking governments to put a moratorium on hog farms, at least until the health risks are studied.

With five million gallons of liquid manure sitting in a clay hole in the ground, Metz had to supply the government with an emergency plan, just in case.

"Anything from a lagoon breach to an overturned tanker truck is all covered in that plan. I mean I don't know it off by memory. It's a long, long document... I don't know it off the top of my head but there's emergency phone numbers to contact," says Kristensen.

Microbiologist Inka Milewski says her study of the nearby Bouctouche River shows some frightening ecological changes. She believes manure runoff from the spraying has contributed to it.

"We asked that environmental impact assessment be done because this is a farm of a significant scale. And we were told that it wasn't necessary."

Milewski conducted water sampling near the spray fields in St. Marie before spraying, then after spraying and a rainfall. The samples were then sent to an accredited lab for testing. The fecal coliform count went from 210, to a level too numerous to count. That's at least ten times higher than what is considered safe for swimming.

But the government assures the citizens everything's environmentally safe. They've done the testing.

Last year, the citizens of St. Marie had had enough. Some of them took over the Agriculture office in Bouctouche for 18 days. The standoff lasted until Premier Bernard Lord formed an Expert's Committee to investigate the citizens' complaints. The entire report, which Lord promised to publicly release, became top secret.

"There's information in that report that's pertinent to Mr. Metz's operation itself, a lot of personal financial information," says Rodney Westin, New Brunswick's agriculture minister.

But an inside source said the report was so contentious because of air testing at the farm, committee members produced only a single copy. Then, they deleted all computer files.

"I don't think that we're hiding anything by not releasing the report. Like I said, we came forward very openly with what the recommendations were. I didn't hide anything when I said that we weren't following what the committee was recommending in their preferred recommendation," says Westin.

The committee's top recommendations were to shut down the farm or move it to a more remote area. It's an option for Metz Farms that Kristensen wasn't opposed to.

"This hasn't been an easy thing to do, not for us, not for our families, or our employees. We've had death threats; we've had fires set. We've had an employee who's had his house burned. We've had family pets poisoned. We have been protested against and harassed and it would have just made our lives a whole lot easier to walk away."

Instead, New Brunswick gave Metz Farms $1.5-million to buy new technology to treat the smell and waste. The government claims this technology will eliminate the need for a lagoon and spraying by next year by separating water from manure, turning it into dry compost.

It's an unlikely solution according to Cook.

"We've looked at a company in Quebec that has spent $6-million trying to do a very similar thing to this and they haven't produced one single pound of compost. It doesn't work."

Gunther Metz refused to be interviewed. But the Agriculture Minister says he's been a good corporate citizen.

Meantime, the community of St. Marie continues to hold weekly meetings with hundreds of people attending. The Poop Patrol also continues to keep watch on the neighbour they don't want.