The Rural Municipality and Town of Craik is coping with a deluge of water this spring that has already flooded a number of homes in the town, washed out two or three grid roads in the RM and is threatening to overflow the dam.

Hilton Spencer, reeve of the RM of Craik, said they have “piles of trouble all over” the area due to frozen ground, farmers draining sloughs, a drainage ditch around town that wasn’t cleaned out, quick warmth outside and a large amount of water runoff that their culverts could not handle.

“It’s different from last year,” said Spencer, noting there is water flowing over roads in several places in the RM and town. “We had more snow last year, but the ground wasn’t froze up (and) quite a bit of it soaked in. It got a little bit warmer (last week) and I think there is just an abnormal bunch of water in the snow this year.”

Craik Mayor Rick Rogers said their drainage ditch around the town overflowed the afternoons of April 8 and 9, which let water stream through the Craik School yard and down Ferguson Street flooding out some houses. He said residents of town could see the water coming before the floods hit when the temperature reached the teens in the middle of the week.

“There (are) probably six houses that are in trouble,” said Rogers. “They had a lot of water in their basement.”

Erin Stephens’ house on Ferguson Street was one of the homes affected.

She said late Tuesday afternoon water was pouring in through the basement windows.

“By 4:30 p.m., walking in our driveway, water was up to our knees.”

Besides flooding their basement, water also flowed into their garage. She said by 10 p.m. Tuesday they had cleaned up the water in the basement. Then Wednesday afternoon more runoff came into town from the fields to the west flooding the Stephens home and others on Ferguson once again.

Their finished basement sustained water damage and many items in the basement and garage are wrecked.

She said their insurance doesn’t cover flood damage. She hopes the town will provide compensation.

“We’ll be expecting the town to do something for us, but nobody has told us anything yet,” she said.

She and her husband and two kids have lived in the house for 10 years and this is the first time they’ve been flooded.

“It’s frustrating because it could have been prevented,” Stephens said, referring to the town not cleaning out the drainage ditch in front of her home.

To read more please see the April 14 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Solutions on how to improve grain transportation efficiency to get Canadian crops to market and the problems farmers, grain handlers, railways, port terminals and government face during increased grain production was the focus of a recent University of Saskatchewan grain summit.

The Grain Handling and Transportation Summit 2014 held March 26 at the Saskatoon Inn and hosted by the Department of Bioresource Policy, Business and Economics (BPBE) in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the U of S brought together a wide range of stakeholders and experts to share information and discuss the current state of grain movement, price and income prognosis and any possible short- and long-term solutions to the current crisis.

“The idea of the conference was to provide a broad overview of the situation and to start to talk about solutions to the issues in a very broad conversation and not get preoccupied with trying to fix this quickly,” said Richard Gray, a U of S agriculture professor who helped organize the grain summit. Gray spoke on “Policy Options to Reduce the Basis” as part of session three of the conference titled “Markets and Policy Solutions.”

The day-long summit also featured sessions on “The Status of the Grain Transportation System,” “Shipper Agreements and Other Logistical Solutions” and lastly “Next Steps for Engagement and Finding Solutions.”

Gray said one of the factors that contributed to this year’s crisis that he highlighted in his talk is the need for a much better public forecasting of crops. He said farmers are now asked what they think is in the field either after harvest or before and in the past couple years those estimates were off by a long shot.

He said this has contributed to this year’s problem because railways weren’t anticipating the 2013 crop and didn’t become aware of it until September. Gray said that isn’t good enough notice for the railways to have sufficient crews hired, among other things, to handle it.

Another “issue that I brought up was the need for greater West Coast capacity,” he said, noting capacity at West Coast terminals is just over 20 million tonnes, while this year’s crop that needs to be exported to the most important market of Asia comes in at over 50 million tonnes. “Even if we did fix the rail situation tomorrow we wouldn’t be able to move it through the West Coast. There would be a lot of grain that would have to move east or all the way south to the Gulf of Mexico in order to hit salt water and then you’re hitting salt water in a market that is saturated with grain.”

Ian McCreary, a graduate of the Dept. of BPBE at the U of S and a former Canadian Wheat Board director, said his talk during session four of the conference presented an overview of this “central problem” of limited West Coast capacity and the lack of coordination that is causing everyone to try to ship through that coast. He said a discussion then followed about what could be learned from how the CWB would have handled it and finally some ideas were presented that could be considered as part of a solution.

To read more please see the April 7 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Dr. Abe Chaukla exemplified kindness in action earlier this month when he travelled to Central America to perform needed dental work on poor sugarcane farmers.

Chaukla, a dentist at the Davidson Dental practice on Washington Avenue, volunteered to join the charitable organization Kindness in Action dental brigade for their March 1 to 9 mission to Esteli, Nicaragua, to work in a sweaty, suction-less and bloody triage dental clinic. He said the experience was so rewarding that he plans to make it an annual humanitarian expedition.

“It’s my first exposure to a dental charitable mission and I was quite moved by it,” said Chaukla, noting he joined the Alberta-based dental charity after learning about it from a former colleague with the Canadian Forces. “I felt like it kind of put my own job in perspective and also it was a good experience to see your work in different countries and the difference you make in their lives.”

While wearing his Saskatchewan Roughriders grubs, Chaukla endured hot and humid weather along with limited dental equipment to perform the emergency work. He said the time spent in the makeshift Esteli dental clinic was difficult and the work was heavy, but the team of Canadian dentists, dental hygienists, nurses and helpers got the job done.

“All the things we use here are taken for granted, but I still was able to pull almost 200 teeth in three days and do a tonne of fillings,” he said. “We were limited in equipment there too. Basically everything was triage. People lined up for…it went around the block. Everything we did was on a visual exam, so if we looked in somebody’s mouth and something really needed to be extracted we did that. If there were fillings to be done, we did that.”

Chaukla said Kindness in Action had his working vacation ready as soon as he touched down in Nicaragua’s tropical capital city of Managua after flying out of the bitter cold of a March 1 day on the Canadian Prairies. He said the volunteer-based dental charity had already completed work on the ground in Esteli to set up bus drivers, tour guides, translators and a supply team for the dental brigade to get right to the business of relieving pain for the greatest number of people possible.

To read more please see the March 31 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

In a few weeks the construction of Riverbend Co-op’s new gas bar and convenience store on Highway 11 at Davidson’s north entrance will go to tender, learned the Co-op’s membership at the organization’s annual general meeting in Davidson Thursday.
The new facility will feature a four-pump eight-lane gas bar, five-pump five-lane cardlock, a large convenience store and “guess who’s coming to town?” Riverbend Co-op’s general manager Dale Firby asked the crowd.
He then quickly spilled the beans, coffee beans in fact, letting everyone know that the 24-acre site will be home to a Tim Hortons franchise.
Riverbend bought the land on the east side of Highway 11 in March 2012 so it could build the new gas bar and convenience store. If a restaurant were to be part of the project, Firby had said it would be a lease arrangement to a franchise with a recognized brand.
With Tim Hortons, “Our view is we’ve got the number one Canadian restaurant teaming up with the number one Western Canadian gas bar operator,” Firby said.
The franchise operator of the Tim Hortons has yet to be determined. Firby said Riverbend is working with a development company that has the job of finding a franchise operator. Riverbend Co-op will then lease the building to the operator.
If all goes well lining up contractors and the weather co-operates, Firby said he expects the new facility to be open in December.

The new roofing work currently underway at Davidson Town Hall may have to be expanded after the roof on the auditorium section of the building sprung a leak the weekend of March 8 and 9.

Lorrie Webber, caretaker of Davidson Town Hall, said water started dripping into the auditorium through ceiling tiles during the night of March 8. He said it began dripping a “little bit more” the next morning and finally gave way the afternoon of March 9.

“There was quite a bit of water,” said Webber.

He said three quarters of the floor was covered in water from the leak that ran down all along the middle of the roof of the auditorium. Webber said they poked holes in the ceiling to get the water out and sucked it up with a floor scrubber until around 10:30 p.m. the night of March 9.

Webber added the floor in the auditorium then “started heaving” from being exposed to the water.

A few days after the flood a number of ceiling tiles in the auditorium were missing and more still in place were marked with water spots while some floor tiles had also been removed. A couple of garbage pales sat under the removed ceiling tiles on the north section of the room.

Gary Edom, administrator for the Town of Davidson, said the roofing work currently being done at Town Hall includes stripping the roof down to the boards and putting in four inches of Styrofoam insulation and re-roofing everything but the auditorium. He said the cost to do the Town Hall came in at about $170,000 and was paid through last year’s budget with the majority of the money coming out of reserves.

“We had the whole thing assessed, the auditorium and the rest of it, and we couldn’t afford to do everything or we didn’t think we could afford to do everything,” said Edom. “We opted to do this part for all this building plus the kitchen because that was originally leaking. We thought the auditorium could maybe wait if it had to, but then it started leaking. Something split open up there on the (March 8 and 9) weekend and now we have to look at what our options are.”

Edom said an insurance adjuster was scheduled to come in last week to take a look at the auditorium roof and a manager with Flynn Canada Limited, the roofing company that is doing the town hall work, is also going to take a look and report back on what is needed. He said the only event scheduled for the auditorium so far that has been affected is the March 15 Davidson Kinettes’ Ladies Night Out concert, which had been relocated to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church Parish Hall.

“Right now (there’s) nothing big I can think of (booked at the auditorium),” he said. “It depends how long this goes on. It could be weeks, who knows, but nothing big is coming up in the near future.”

To read more please see the March 17 print edition of The Davidson Leader.