A massive slough called Bulrush Lake on the north side of the Town of Imperial has overflowed its banks and is destroying the livelihoods of farmers who have land nearby.

Bruce Hill, who has a cherry orchard of 5,000 trees and a cherry processing plant near Imperial, said Bulrush Lake is normally at about 700 acres when it is full, but right now its size is around 1,000 acres and it keeps getting bigger. He said to try and keep the water away from his processing plant he has built a 400-foot dyke and has been pumping groundwater out of his yard every day with little progress to show for it.

“It’s like a toothache,” he said. “It doesn’t go away.”

Bruce said it is too early to assess the damage to his plants, but there is some flooding in his cherry orchard and one thing fruit trees don’t like is to be flooded. He said there are 70-year-old trees in his orchard that have been flooded for the past two months and will now probably die along with a well that is the water source for his cherry processing plant and he is concerned that could become contaminated by surface water.

“Plant loss you can insure against, but we chose not to because it never happened (before) and these plants were on high ground,” said Bruce. “Production loss is not insurable under crop insurance, so we’re going to see a drastic decline.”

David Hill, who is a livestock producer on land near his brother Bruce, said water that has gone over the banks at Bulrush Lake has flooded at least 200 acres of good farmland on his property. He said the near 20 inches of rain the area has seen since the snowmelt has just been too much and the basin can’t hold any more water.

“It spilled over and started heading for (Last Mountain Lake),” said David. “I would imagine there are another 1,400 acres on the way to the lake that are affected at least”

David said this 200-acre loss is in addition to the 100 acres or so he lost in each of the few years preceding this one. He said a well that is located “on an island in the centre of all this” has also basically been lost this year, which means he has to find another solution for watering his cattle during the winter months or else he would have to sell some of them.

“I saw it coming for the last five years,” he said. “It was building and building and this spring when we got all that rain, well, it just made a mess.”

Trevor Lewis, who owns a seed cleaning plant with his brother Daryl on land between the two Hill farms, said they have built a berm around their yard to keep the water back, but the strong winds and heavy rain the area has received is eating it away. He said they had stockpiled clay within their berm in case they had to defend against any leaks and that did prove fortunate when three sprouted one morning.

To read more please see the July 21 print edition of The Davidson Leader.