A Westlock County landowner wants $15,000 from the county in compensation for lost crops after several years of flooding he says the municipality is ignoring.
Over the last four years, Tony Gerun said he was promised by successive administrators and councillors that excessive flooding on his land, located just south of town on Highway 44, would be dealt with, but so far very little has been done.
“When it gets flooded out, I lose the crop. So I have the expense of planting the crop and then it gets flooded out. I’ve been waiting for them to do something for seven years,” said Gerun.
“The last four years I’ve had promises made that it would get cleaned, but all they did is flatten the grass,” he said.
“It’s like a slap in the face.”
He said he lost 30 acres of canola crop in 2017 after it sat in water for more than a month.
“They came and surveyed it one year, then a year later they lost the survey so they had to come back,” he said.
“They finally just flattened the grass and took a few wheelbarrows of dirt out. I could have done that with a tractor.”
Gerun said a portion of his land floods ever since the county cleaned a ditch east of his property in 2010.
He appeared before county council Dec. 19 to voice his concerns — council voted to take his presentation as information and requested a report from administration, which will be prepared for council’s Feb. 13 meeting.
Administration presented a series of e-mails to council, including between Gerun and the county detailing the problem and from Alberta Environment confirming the municipality had jurisdiction over the road ditch network.
“All the county needs to do is tell (Alberta Environment) when they’re going to do it,” said Gerun. “But it’s not getting done. They’re basically using my property as a holding reservoir.”
As a landowner, Gerun is not legally able to work on the ditch and expressed frustration with the lack of progress and moving goalposts.
“When I asked them to get the ditch cleaned this winter, they told me I had to have a meeting with everyone affected down the line. But when they did the ditching seven years ago no one consulted me, or anyone else further down. Every year there’s always an excuse and we’ve been going on now for seven years.
“I can understand everyone’s strapped for money, but there’s got to be a time to budget for that,” he said. “I have no problems with the water coming through my land, just don’t bottleneck it here.”
Chief administrative officer Leo Ludwig said that there was no indication the county was responsible for the situation and that no decision will be made until council saw the report.
“The road ditch network is not designed to facilitate field drainage,” he said. “Its primary purpose is to provide road drainage for the transportation network and prevent road floods.”
