The Environment Ministry Meeting

So I went to the meeting at the Village of Prud'homme.  This was the first time I have been to a meeting with the council.  I arrived before my neighbors but I saw them coming up the road so I just went in to get a seat.  When I walk in the door I am greeted and asked what I need.  I said "I am Jennie Hooper and I am here for the meeting with the Ministry of Environment", "Oh, I don't see you on the itinerary" was the response I received, followed by "If you are not on the itinerary I don't know if you can come in" followed by "You can't speak if you are not on the itinerary".  At this point Mayor Margret interrupts and says that I can sit in on the meeting.  Really?  That's how you want to start a relationship with me?  Fine, you want it, you got it.  No wonder anyone I have ever talked to who has had to deal with the council for the Village of Prud'homme has nothing but bad things to say.  I did not spend 9 years in a trailer in Hawarden to find my farm and let it become a sewage dump site, forget it!  I'm a grownup now, my words matter too.

Anyway, so everyone gets a seat and Mayor Margret starts the meeting.  First a diagram of what needs to be figured out: the design of the lagoon, the location of the lagoon, the cost of everything, and the timeline.  Boy, thanks for the diagram, I would have had a hard time following that (yes I am a little wound up after the whole thing).  Anyway, I digress.  So they continue to talk about moving the lagoon closer to the highway but keeping it on our neighbors land.  This gets me confused because I'm pretty sure they don't want the lagoon on their land anymore.  And it goes on and on like this.  They have diagrams and sketches and everything all going with the plan that the lagoon will still exist on our neighbors land.  Okay, well maybe things have changed (I found out after the meeting that no, things have not changed, the village has not signed any permits with the neighbors to build the lagoon on their land). 

So the main problem the village is having is that they don't have any money.  Ahhh, that's too bad.  Me neither after putting in a +$10,000 septic tank.  Which is basically what a lagoon is for a town, huh, funny.  I guess we could have just bought a couple hundred dollars worth of pipe and just pumped our crap out into the lake too.  Dang.  Oh, I'm digressing again, sorry.  Okay, so they had originally applied for help from the Disaster Relief people or something and they had said they could only get up to $500,000.00 but now they have found out that there actually is no limit but they need to get a new assessment done.  The following was in a letter sent to the village from the Minister of Municipal Affairs:

Further, CPSP (Ministry of Corrections, Public Safety and Policing) advises that under current PDAP (Provincial Disaster Assistance Program) Regulations, there is no maximum payout for municipal claims.  Payment to municipalities cannot be made until the following has been completed: a damage assessment and subsequent final report from an assigned engineer which documents damages directly caused by the event and submission of paid invoices for completed work from the municipality.  To help reduce the financial burden of major expenses for the municipality, PDAP can provide progress payments in order to assist the municipality with cash flow.  Please advise PDAP officials if you would like assistance in this regard.

There ya go, and you just found this out?  So if they need all the engineering stuff to be done then why haven't you started getting permits and all the paper work from the government that has to be done?  Their response, they don't have any money.  They don't want to start anything until they have secured the financial support.  Well, no one is going to give you financial support unless you start something!  Just start something, anything!  Please!  You need help getting attention from the government?  Let us know!  We're already writing letters, doesn't hurt to write a few more!

Another excerpt from the letter to the Village of Prud'homme from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs:

The Ministry of Corrections, Public Safety and Policing (CPSP) has advised that there is a six month deadline from the date of the disaster to submit a registration claim for the municipality and a one year deadline from the date of the disaster to complete all cleanup, repairs, restorations and replacements.  Nevertheless, CPSP has been very receptive to providing extensions on these Provincial Disaster Assistance Program (PDAP) deadlines due to weather and other extenuating circumstances.  Please advise PDAP directly if you require an extension to one of these deadlines.  You must ensure that this request includes the reasons for the request and a date in which you feel that the tasks can be completed.

Well, it's definitely been 6 months since our area was declared a disaster area.  It could even have been a year now.  They had better hurry up or they won't be getting any money from them!

I don't even want to get into what the rest of the letter said, they're just lucky they sent it to me after the meeting.  Not that it would matter, I wasn't on the itinerary so I couldn't speak anyway.

Not much else happened.  The Ministry of Environment guys seemed very adamant about getting going on something (although I was told later that it was only because we were there).  They said they can issue a Protection Order if the project stalls.  I guess that's why they keep having meetings.  I asked my neighbor who was on the itinerary to ask who will be responsible for cleaning up our land and one of the Ministry of Environment guys said that it would be the town who would be responsible and said that it would not be unreasonable to request that someone from the town do a walk down the road to pick up all the garbage that is washing up from the lagoon (I think the count is somewhere around 10 tampon applicators, nice).  Mayor Margret did not look impressed.  Suck it up, it's your mess!  Make the villagers do it, then maybe they will quit flushing them!  Anyway, the guys from the Ministry of Environment confirmed that the solution will be in place in the next 5 years.  Wow, that fast hey!  No, I'm not really impressed, that was sarcasm.  The engineer from BULLEE said that they could get the earth moving done this year but it would take at least 6 months to get a pump in and designing and building the lift system will take a while. 

So we asked about temporary solutions.  The engineer from BULLEE suggested pumping some of the water out.  That is the first time in a year anyone has even offered that.  The towns argument is that they looked into it 40 years ago and there was no where to pump the water because it's in a "catch basin".  I'm sure you could pump it somewhere.  When the town lost water for 5 days a little while ago water was trucked in.  Why couldn't they truck our water in.  Or put us on town water.  Even the letter from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs suggested that, but nothing from the town.  They say they care but I have a hard time believing it.

So basically we got no where.  Well that was worth missing an afternoon of work.  At least they let me talk at work (even though they may not like it some times).  So on with the letters to anyone who will read them I guess.  Well, I was going to send them anyway, I guess I just have more information for them.  If anyone know anyone who can help, please let me know!  Share the story!

Water Update

Someone from the Ministry of Environment is coming to Prud'homme today for a meeting, at 2pm.  Really, 2pm, obviously not interested in other people actually being able to attend.  Well, we'll fool you, we'll take time off of work to go!  Ha!  Better watch out now!

Our neighbor has taken some wonderful photos of what is going on out here.  Here are a couple of them:

The Fight Continues

So two weeks ago we got a call from the Village of Prud'homme informing us that we needed to register with the Watershed Authority to get assistance with the flooding situation.  Thankfully my better half was home that day so he called up the Watershed Authority and registered.  Great.  He then also talked to our RM Councilor Travis.  Travis came over to take a look around (Travis has already talked to our neighbors and at this point in time it was believed that they were getting a berm built around the end of their yard that would protect not only their bins, house, and yard but also our well from the poop water (yes, we are calling it the poop water now so we can distinguish it from the regular flood water)). 

The following actions were discussed:
- building a berm around the back of our yard to protect us from the poop water
- building a trench from where the fresh water flood is happening, through our field (pretty much right across the middle) over to where the poop water is to hopefully prevent flooding in our yard
- building a trench through an approach that goes into our field to allow our ditches to drain down to the poop water
- tear out our entire yard (not the house) and bring in 2 feet of top soil to raise the whole place to avoid further flooding (that would be done by the watershed, and sounds very scary)

Alrigthy, well at least ideas are being tossed around, that's better then nothing.  The same day a lady polling for Brad Trost calls and asks if we have any issues we would like to raise, well, you picked the right day to call for issues lady.  She gets the whole story.  At the end she says we have to talk to our MLA first and gives us the phone number.  Fine, we can do that (been meaning to anyway but we didn't know who she was). 

So, a week goes by and pretty much nothing happens.  We keep calling people for updates and nothing.  A guy from the Watershed Authority was at our house and Jaxie tried to bite him (not exactly helping our cause) so he had to take pictures from inside his truck.  But still no news.  Alright people, the ground is thawing and turning into mud, if we're going to do some of this stuff we had better get it done!

3 days ago we find out that our neighbors are not getting a berm.  The Watershed Authority decided that they would not build a berm to protect them (and our well) from the poop water.  What?!?  That sounds like total crap to me!  And if they aren't going to build them a berm are we going to get any help!  The poop water is practically in their yard (yes, our yard is under water but at least it's the clean water, not the poop water, for now anyway). 

So I guess the plan is now to get an email together with pictures and video to send to the MLA, call the Watershed Authority and the RM Councilor Travis to see where they are at, and start considering contacting local news crews.  And now you know what I know.

PS. The town of Prud'homme had a water main break on Saturday night and could not find it.  The town has not had water since!  They had to start trucking water in for the village people!  Karma, I think so!  To try to track it down they asked the villagers to report an "suspicious" puddles!  What the hell is a "suspicious" puddle?  And how can you tell it apart from all the regular puddles laying around since it is the middle of spring.