Farm owners fear a long-running pipeline project will damage soil

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

by DAVE PINK

Rural landowners across Canada are becoming increasingly frustrated and angry with the laws that allow oil, gas and water pipelines to cross their properties.

The landowner blockade that forced the recent temporary disruption in work on the pipeline that supplies water to the City of London is just a symptom of the growing discontent. Members of the Lake Huron Pipeline Land Owners Association moved in to stop the upgrading work on the pipeline on June 5 near the town of Ailsa Craig — a standoff that was resolved, for now, at a short meeting the following day.

“We have an independent monitor who is supposed to be there when significant construction is taking place. His job is to see that the soil is not being damaged,” says Ian Goudy, the London-area farmer who chairs the landowners’ association. “What triggered this protest is that they were not involving him when we thought they should have. If nobody is there to watch them, they can wreck the soil.”

The Lake Huron and Elgin Primary Water Supply Systems is involved in a long-term project to twin the 49-year-old water line, which runs from the shores of Lake Huron, near Goderich Grand Bend to the village of Arva, just north of London. Goudy said that the water system officials agreed during the meeting to greater involvement of the association’s Guelph-based consultant, who is paid by the pipeline operator — although the rules and regulations governing pipelines do allow routine and emergency maintenance without the presence of the monitor.

Water system manager Andrew Henry could not be reached for comment.

Goudy says the construction process removes the topsoil, and can bring non-productive subsoil to the surface, a problem compounded in wet conditions. “They were working in wet conditions, which, as far as we’re concerned, is not the best time to be doing this,” he says.

The  landowners and the water system have been unable to negotiate a maintenance agreement.

Goudy, who has both water and natural gas lines crossing his property, says the soil that covers these pipelines is virtually useless. “It’s about as productive as a gravel road.” He says that a pipeline would, essentially, take three to four acres of land out of production on any given 100-acre farm.

And there’s nothing property owners can do about it, he says.  Federal and provincial law grants pipeline operators the right to cross private properties, whether the landowner wants the pipeline or not. “As far as pipelines go, legally, we have been stripped of a lot of our rights,” says Goudy. “As individuals it is almost hopeless to do anything, but with a high percentage of landowners involved it does give us some influence.”

He says that the water pipeline crosses about 60 to 70 mostly farm properties, and about 90 per cent of those landowners are members of the association.

Goudy is also a member of the Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowners Associations (CAEPLA). Its chief executive officer, Don Core of Regina, says it is the goal of the association to educate landowners on their pipeline rights and to lobby the federal and provincial governments for changes to what he calls a one-sided arrangement that favours the pipeline operators.

“Most landowners don’t know the rules and regulations,” says Core. “The pipeline monopolies are impeding our business, and they are not compensating us. It is really nothing more than a transfer of wealth from the farmers to the monopolies that own the pipelines. They are actually stealing our land.”

While farmers do receive a lump-sum payment before any pipeline crosses their land, it doesn’t come close to compensating for the long-term losses, and the long-term liabilities. “We’ve come to understand the abandonment issue,” he says. “Farmers have to understand that when the pipeline is abandoned, they will be left with the liability costs. Your land is going to be like an abandoned gas station.”

Core says that during the 1950s and ’60s, everyone, farmers included, believed that bringing energy from the West to consumers in the East was the right thing to do. In fact, “farmers considered it their duty,” he says.

But the legislation that was put in place 50 years ago to encourage pipeline development is still in place, and working against the landowners. For years, farmers felt powerless in any dispute with the pipeline corporation, but e-mails and the Internet have changed all that, and now the affected landowners are forming associations and demanding changes, says Core.

“We’re trying to level the playing field by banding together to negotiate fairer agreements,” he says. “Pipeline companies don’t live in a free-market economy. The legislation allows them to take our land. What we need are iron-clad contracts that operate under the discipline of insurance.” BF