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Davidson

Smart meters set for early retirement

Approximately 400 smart meters will be replaced in the Davidson area in the next six to nine months in an effort by SaskPower to ensure the safety of their customers.

The decision comes on the heels of nine smart meters being linked to fires across the province and will be part of the around 105,000 smart meters that will be replaced with the old-style meters that SaskPower has been using for the past 10 years.

Robert Watson, president and CEO of SaskPower, said no smart meters have failed in the Davidson area and there is actually only one smart meter installed in Davidson itself. He said the majority of the 400 meters in the area are installed in Chamberlain and Craik.

“We’re starting with those customers who’ve requested a meter removal first, followed by the areas that have experienced meter failures to date,” said Watson, about when the smart meters will be removed. “We estimate that the entire process will take (six to nine months), although we’re looking at ways to speed up the meter removals so that the timeline is closer to (six) months. Certainly we want to do as much as we can while we have good weather. We are able to exchange more meters in the summer months than winter months. However, we will not sacrifice safety for the sake of speed.”

Watson said the crown corporation is currently investigating the cause of the meter failures with two independent labs along with Sensus, the manufacturer of the smart meters, to determine the root cause. He said the investigative process may take several months to complete, as there are a number of contributing factors that have to be considered.

He said the cost to replace the existing smart meters is $15 million, while the total cost-to-date of installing and deploying the smart meter program is an estimated $32 million, which is in addition to the costs of replacing the meters and brings the total price tag to $47 million. In an Aug. 5 statement posted on the SaskPower website, it is stated the cost to replace the smart meters will not impact rates and the crown corporation would work within their budget to correct the issue.

Watson said customers with smart meters will receive a letter approximately two weeks before they replace the meter. He said SaskPower employees would also notify all customers in person on the day of the installation and send a letter to their mailbox once the meter is replaced.

“Customers are invited to contact SaskPower at any time with their concerns by calling 1-855-877-0975,” said Watson. “We have committed to being as responsive to customers as possible.”

featured

Bulrush Lake causes havoc for area farmers

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.

Davidson

RCMP urge caution with flooded roads

The Watrous department of the RCMP is reminding drivers to be cautious when encountering flooded roads after a traffic accident earlier this month claimed the life of a 39-year-old Imperial man.

“People need to be aware of (their) surroundings,” said Watrous RCMP Sergeant Earl LeBlanc. “We advise people not to cross any roads that have water on it.”

At approximately 10 p.m. on July 11 an unidentified male driver of a F-350 pickup truck, who was accompanied by his 10-year-old son, veered off the east side of a rural grid road and into a slough about four kilometres south of Highway 15 in the Rural Municipality of Wood Creek. At the time of the accident, about 200 metres of the road was covered with water from a nearby slough that had overflowed due to recent flooding in the area.

Once the truck began to submerge in the deeper water, LeBlanc said the driver made sure his son got out of the vehicle first and began to swim to safety. He said the son made it to dry land and is physically unhurt, but the driver was unable to reach land safely once he exited the truck.

The body of the deceased male driver and the truck was located and removed the next day from the water with the assistance of the RCMP Underwater Recovery Team. An autopsy has been ordered by the office of the Chief Coroner to determine the exact cause of death.

LeBlanc said speed was not an issue in the accident and there is no indication right now that alcohol may have been a factor. He said police have concluded that driver error is the cause of the crash, but their investigation remains open until a cause of death is determined.

The Watrous RCMP receives reports of vehicles entering sloughs every now and again due to the many bodies of water that line roads and highways in the province, said LeBlanc, but they don’t hear of many vehicles veering into sloughs off of flooded roads. He said residents of a particular area may feel comfortable crossing roads that have water on them due to their familiarity with them, but the RCMP would like to make it clear their advice is to stay off any flooded roadways.

Davidson

Cyclists cross country for clean water

When the Cycling4water team biked into Davidson last Monday they had already travelled over 2,000 kilometres and raised enough money to build 20 water wells in four African countries, but they still had a long way to go.

The four-man cycling team of Timo Itkonen, Richard Blaschek, Rob Montgomery and Mike Woodard are biking from Victoria, B.C., to St. John’s, Nfld., over the course of 54 days this summer with a goal of raising $510,000 or enough money to build 60 water wells in Benin, Togo, Tanzania and Ethiopia. The goal supports the work of Global Aid Network (GAiN), a Christian worldwide humanitarian relief and development organization that has already provided 829 water wells to needy communities around the globe.

“On average each well delivers water to about 1,000 people,” said Montgomery, who decided to bike across Canada for a worthy cause as a way to celebrate his 60th birthday this year and initially proposed the idea to Woodard. “They are not just little residential wells. They are for whole communities or villages and so with the wonderful work (GAiN’s) doing we decided that we wanted to partner with them.”

Woodard, who admitted he needed about three months to decide he’d accept the offer to bike across Canada, said the fact that caught his attention and forced him into action is the World Health Organization note that a child dies from water-related diseases every 21 seconds. He said the thought of contributing to the goal of providing 60,000 people with clean water motivated him to sign up for the ride.

“One of the things I was contemplating just riding into this community is the 20 wells that are pledged now really have been championed by somebody,” said Woodard, noting people can donate through their cycling4water.ca website. “About a week ago a friend of mine said ‘you know we’re going to sign up for a well. We don’t have $8,500, which is how much one well costs, but we’ve got lots of friends and relatives and we’re just going to ask them to come together to provide water for one village and transform that village as a team effort.'”

Montgomery said when he turns 60 on August 19 and the four-man team is completing their final leg of the tour on the East Coast, his hope is to have a cake with 60 candles on it not so much to celebrate his birthday, but to celebrate the building of 60 wells. He said the ride across Canada is a great way to reach that goal because it also gives the team a chance to experience the beauty of Canada and they’ve already seen some great sights so far.

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

Craik

Oscar haunts Craik’s Old Town Hall

Someone occasionally knocks on the upstairs wooden floorboards at the Old Town Hall building during the Craik’s Farmer’s Market, but only an empty room is found whenever a curious person puts down their coffee to go up and see who it is.

The patrons and workers of the Market, which is located on the first floor of the Old Town Hall building every Friday from May to the end of September, believe no one has found anything because Oscar is making the noise. Oscar is the ghost that can be heard every now and again playing in the old second floor dancehall.

“Every once in a while you can hear him walking around up there banging on things,” said Doug Androsoff after he had just settled down for his usual Friday morning coffee at the Farmer’s Market. “They say across the street the building that was in that lot was a hardware (store), but the backend of it used to be the mortuary at one time. There is talk about ghosts from the mortuary moving upstairs here when that building got torn down.”

Androsoff described the sound as either a child bouncing a basketball on the wooden floorboards upstairs or a piece of siding flapping against a wall. He said the problem with concluding the latter is the flapping noise occurs whether it is windy or not.

Pauline Dixon, a regular patron at the Farmer’s Market, said Oscar first started making noise at the Old Town Hall about four or five years ago when the neighbouring and nearly century-old hardware and burial preparation building owned first by Ernest Insull and then George Gower was demolished. She said the ghost must have needed a “place to be” after that happened and the majority of the regulars at the Farmer’s Market have no problem with the bit of noise he makes at his new haunt.

“Some people are scared,” said Dixon, noting one customer at the Market seemed a little frightened when he was told a ghost lurked upstairs. “But I’ve never been scared.”

Dixon said no one has actually seen the ghost, but as far as they can tell Oscar makes his home around the old ticket booth room that is situated right above the Market space. She said there is no heat and water pipes on the second floor of the building, so there has to be another explanation for the rapping.

“I’m so used to it,” said Cindy Jaremicki, who regularly sells baking goods at the Market, about the noise. “It’s usually pretty much every Friday you hear him at least once (and) sometimes more. (It’s) usually earlier in the morning you hear it more, but then it’s quieter in here. When it’s noisy here you might not notice it, but it does happen later in the day too.”

Jaremicki said nobody has specifically gone looking for Oscar, but people have tried to find an explanation for the banging sounds and can’t come up with any. She said even though the ghost hasn’t seemed to attract any more patrons to the normally bustling Market it has at least added to the conversion around the coffee table.

“I’ve heard him from in here and from in the library (located in the room next to the Market),” said Androsoff, noting he has no idea how the ghost got to be named Oscar. “He does it whether there is many people around or not. It’s a mystery.”

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Tornadoes touch down

At least two tornados touched down near Davidson July 5 causing destruction, awe and some beautiful photo opportunities for those few brave enough to venture near its path.

Rural Municipality of Wood Creek farmer Jack Morrison was toiling outside his home on the warm early summer Sunday afternoon when ominous black clouds rolled across, which were accompanied by the usual heavy rainfall they bring. The low rolling clouds also brought a more unusual sight that forced Morrison into a run for the house.

“I went and got the camera,” said Morrison. “It was about a mile, two miles, away, so I went outside to take pictures. I was just watching it. It came my way a bit, but it veered off and headed east.”

Morrison said he tried to take some pictures of the twister touching down from inside his house, but due to the rain hitting the window and subsequently blocking his shots he ventured out into his yard to capture the storm. From this vantage point, he took numerous pictures of the tornado touching down and then moving across a nearby field while ripping up trees and neighbouring farm fences and buildings that crossed its path.

“When I was done taking pictures, another cloud came in from the back,” he said, noting his girlfriend Shelly warned him to the approaching second tornado from her safer spot in the house. “I turned into it (and then) was kind of paying attention to it.”

At this point Morrison’s camera batteries went dead, so he took a look at the sky and decided the next point of attack. He said the twister was heading in “pretty bad” from the north and decided to “get out of there” and head back inside.

“Then I talked to Ted Murfitt and he said there was three or four back up in the hills,” said Morrison.

Murfitt was on his farm in the RM of McCraney when the storm rolled in, but didn’t know the extent of the danger until his son Cal gave his wife Lucille a call explaining what was coming. Once Lucille relayed the message he got his camera and started taking pictures.

From his yard looking south Murfitt caught the first “big one” as it went down and stayed down on a path moving away from his property. He said this differed from the second tornado that shortly followed it because that one quickly came to the ground and then lifted back up.

Murfitt said the storm also included an inch of rain in around 15 minutes that helped add to the damage the two twisters brought to the area. As evidenced by a few after-storm photos he took, this destruction included a number of trees on the south side of Ray and Stella Kergen’s yard being stripped and snapped in half.

Morrison said the violent storm lasted about 20 minutes in total and appeared to be moving fast out of the area. He said there was no damage to his property and the pictures he took while standing outside his home show the tornado about as close as he’d like one to get.