24 RESTORATION
through mismanagement,” says Forbes. “You know, we may not have university degrees, but we have been making those water systems work to support successful farms for 40 years!” OBTWG first proposed drilling a well. “There’s the dry hole that
Art’s dad drilled years ago,” says Forbes, pointing to a capped wellhead at the edge of his property. “But they tried drilling two different wells anyway, and both came up dry.”
The next solution was to install a river pumping system at the original site. “We asked them if they could move the intake about 100 metres down river, where the river merged into one channel again and was deeper, but they said that would be too expensive,” continues Forbes. “The engineers ... dug a trench in the riverbed and laid the intake into the hole. We pointed out that it would fill up with silt as soon as the river started to move in the spring, but they ignored us, and it was awful!” Forbes was in the river as soon as the freshet began, cleaning out the intake. The water started at his knees,
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rose to his waist, and then he quit, fearing for his safety. “In the spring, the water rises more than five feet and there was no way I could go out there, pull the intake off the bottom and clean it,” he says. “When the water level dropped later in the summer, we couldn’t find the intake. It was buried under two feet of gravel and sand.”
The men took matters into
their own hands, cutting the OBTWG line and putting in their own floating intake. But because the water was shallow, the line picked up too much sediment and required constant cleaning. To make matters worse,
OBTWG had only built one system for the two farms, meaning the limited supply of muddy water had to be shared, as did operating costs. “We were working against each other; sometimes we both needed water and there wasn’t enough and how do you divide the electric bill?” asks Forbes. How to pay for it became a bigger issue when a shortage of good quality water fell short of what he needed to water his 13 acres of vegetables. Forbes lost nearly all his crop in 2011, but got smart the following year and
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Gord Forbes overlooks the old pump location showing the receding water level and exposed gravel. "I expect that the river will eventually dry up in this old channel," he says. TOM WALKER PHOTO
planted just eight acres. “But I lost money because I had less crop, and also because I had to hire a hand to do field work,” he says. “Keeping the water system clear was nearly a full-time job.”
The men told the OBTWG what was going on, and the financial hit they were taking, but the concerns fell on deaf ears. “They told us we had water
and we just weren’t looking after the system properly,” says Forbes. “We kept pointing out that it was not enough volume of water, and explaining the amount of maintenance we were doing.”
Getting nowhere
Five years of meetings, letters and staff changes led nowhere. While taxpayer dollars were spent discussing the issue – “avoiding,” Forbes
says – the two men had less and less income on which to pay taxes to government. “These guys get paid to be at the meetings, and when we go we lose money because we are away from our business,” he fumes. Finally, in 2016, the OBTWG did what the farmers had asked for all along. “They moved the entire
system down to deeper water and built two separate floating intakes,” says Forbes. “Now we have water and I can crop all my fields again.” They can also push ahead with a farm stand and other projects deferred while getting hosed in the irrigation debacle. Most of all, they’re sorry their fathers won’t see them succeed. “What hit Art and I really
hard was we both lost our dads during that time, and we couldn’t tell them there was a
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solution,” says Forbes. “It looked like we might lose the farms they had worked so hard to establish.” Both farms are now
seeking compensation for business losses and damage to their pumping infrastructure. OBTWG has been silent for nearly a year, however. The men haven’t received a response, and Country Life in BC’s request for information went unanswered by press time.
The experience should be a warning to other farmers, says Forbes. “The way they have
behaved is shameful,” he says. “Don’t be fooled into thinking that because it is a do-good environmental project that everything will go smoothly and you will be taken care of. Don’t rely on a promise or a handshake. Make sure that you get everything in writing.”
COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • OCTOBER 2018
The Canadian Angus Rancher Endorsed & Canadian Angus Tag Program
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The Canadian Angus Rancher Endorsed Program guarantees that the beef used in products bearing this label come from beef catlle with 50% or more Canadian Angus genetics.
2018 RANCHER ENDORSED CALF SALES VJV, Dawson Creek
October 19th October 23rd
BC Livestock, Williams Lake October 24th BC Livestock, Vanderhoof October 26th
www.bcangus.ca Jim Moon President 250.567.9762 z Carley Henniger Secretary 250.571.3475
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