The Editor:
Saskatchewan, we have a problem, and it is water.
How does this happen when there are laws in place where land alterations are concerned? Anyone with the right equipment, it appears, can head out and alter their land to drain this slough and that one, yet no one is monitoring these alterations until it's too late?
But apparently those laws don't come into effect until somebody complains about someone draining land above them. Till that proverbial wheel starts squealing, is there attention paid? I'm here to tell you that the wheel is deafening our neighbours and us at this moment.
Hiding under the guise of "state of emergency" laws is appalling. Is it a licence to drown out people below you? How about maybe finding out how this water problem came about in the first place? Why just pass it down from one RM or community to the next?? That is not a solution; it is just a lot of grease in the right place at the right time.
We happen to be sitting on, and own, two major waterways, AKA ravines, that drain naturally into the Alameda Dam. We could have easily drained every acre that we farm, but we never have. Because it is illegal! There are supposed to be laws against it!
Our farming and ranching practices, and those of our neighbours, are drastically being compromised, and for whose gain? Certainly not ours. We can see the value of our land declining as the water rises on our cultivated acres and so-called "wasteland" or what we call, our pastures. We are mixed farmers, normally, every acre we own is put to use in our operation.
And before you pass judgment on us, thinking that we may squeak too much, put yourselves in our position. We did not ask for this, nor want this. But are we to pay the ultimate price for others errors?
Kathy Sloan,
Alameda, Sask.
