Season 1, Episode 23: When There is Interdepence

Mountain View, Red Deer and Sturgeon Counties

In this episode, Alex and me delve into the critical issues surrounding water and gravel extraction in Alberta, featuring a discussion with community members and experts facing gravel mining. The episode highlights the environmental and legal challenges faced by residents in areas like Sturgeon County and Sundre, where gravel pits and water contamination are prevalent. Speakers share their personal experiences and the broader implications of water commodification, emphasizing the need for legal action and community support to protect water rights and natural resources. The conversation underscores the urgency of addressing these issues to ensure a sustainable future for all.

Alex: Welcome to The Gravity Well podcast, where you and we break down heavy ideas into small buckets you and we can handle. Your mission and our mission is simple. Help us work through your dilemmas in conversation and process. Together, you, we, and your community will face our dilemmas and make the world a better place for all. Jenny?

Jenny:

In the spirit of truth, I acknowledge I’m a settler on stolen Blackfoot Treaty 7 territory in Métis Districts 5 and 6 lands. I take reconcili-action by seeking the wisdom of elders and individuals who aim to restore water, air, land, life, or community. A healthy living relationship with the earth and each other is our guide.

Okay, thrilled to have both some familiar and new faces in the room today. We have Neil, Christina, and Joyce from the Sundre Area, and we have Ian and Mike that are close to my hometown, Sturgeon County area. Thank you so much for joining us, everyone.

We’re here to talk again about gravel and water issues that we’re seeing in many sensitive areas in Alberta. In Sturgeon County, Sundre, down in Bighill Springs, and I’m sure there’s a couple others that I’m not aware of. But anyway, my point is, we’re back here to talk about what’s going on in terms of water, both loss and contamination that’s being seen in offsetting wells, and hear how hard this is for people that live offsetting gravel and what it means in your lives.

It’s pretty shocking to talk to you guys every time, the amount of stuff that you have to take on in your personal life with these issues, and I appreciate all the work that you’re doing for community, without them potentially knowing about it. So that’s why we’re doing this, is we want to make sure people know what you what’s going on and how they can support. So let’s start there. Alex, and I’m sure I missed some stuff if you want to add a little introduction.

Alex:

Hi, my name is Alex. I’m a Jack Of All Trades, master of none. I have an Arts background. I also work extensively in heavy duty construction for a decade and private voluntary-based security and crowd control for 21 years. Jenny and I met at the doors when she was running for election, and we discovered that we had some priority issues and concerns that we could both relate to and we decided to work together for the following year. And this is where it’s kind of landed us.

My concerns, primarily are the Bighill Creek Provincial Park, because there is gravel extraction going on there and that’s a place that’s near and dear to me. I live in Rocky View County. I’d like to make sure that it can be preserved for generations to come. We have had conversations with Jerry Bietz and other people regarding that. We’ve also had conversations with folks in Sundre surrounding areas. Jenny’s actually been more proactive in that.

I’ve been focused on other tasks, but my interest is making sure that we can preserve and ensure water supply. Make sure that it’s safe not only for human consumption but for our environment. With that, I will leave it open to the floor.

Jenny:

Okay, we’re going to start with you, Ian. If you can please tell us what brought you here and what’s your issue if you want to describe it in its totality if you can. Thanks.

Ian:

Okay, I’m Ian Skinner and I live in Sturgeon County and we’re within the Area Structure Plan the Calahoo-Villeneuve sand and gravel area. Our concerns here have been, of course, the land use decisions made by the county regarding environmental legislation, either being not applicable or omitted during land use plan decisions. And my background is a 25-plus-year environmental resource management leader. Most recently, we’ve identified a 10 meter water table decline in the area with an eight kilometer cone of depression. And at this time, no level of government has come to us to advise about this huge decline in the water table. And also there’s a perception maybe that there’s APEGA members working outside of their jurisdiction or area of expertise. And I’ll pass it over to Mike.

Mike:

Great. Hi, my name is Mike Northcott. I’m in Lac Ste Anne County within the Sturgeon River watershed. And we started our organization 20 years ago; we have 20 years of time spent in identifying the impacts to the natural functions of the water within the Sturgeon River watershed. Our issues, mostly, are the ignoring of laws, the legal right to water, and the destruction of the natural functions within our watershed.

These particular things have never ever been taken to the point where they sit in front of a judge and a decision is made about these ignoring of the laws that we’ve identified. Which is the section of the Municipal Government Act (MGA) that identifies those responsible for upholding the laws. And for those that are in the process ignoring these laws during the times when these gravel extractions are to take place. Where the proper review has never been done. [Restoring and maintaining} the natural functions is very important to us.

We have multiple months and years of information, on computer and on all of the endeavors that we’ve been through. We’re more than happy to give any information that we can to assist people within the group and to identify those that are purposely ignoring the laws and that are in. What really bothers us is a recent issue that’s come forward is what appears to be the commodification of water, if that’s a word commodification, and we have seen that result here in this valley of where all of a sudden the towns within the city of Edmonton are also supplying the water to all of us, surrounding towns, around the city.

Those areas originally had their own wells, and they originally supplied their own water. One of them is on a lake, Lake Wabamun. The other one is on the within the Sturgeon River watershed, not just the watershed within the Sturgeon River area. Villeneuve and Onoway have been made to pipe water. Now, when you start to commodify water, somebody is making a lot of money. And once you’re under that control, they can actually turn off your tap if you don’t pay.

That goes against what Ian talked about already, which was the legal right that every human being has to water. And that is being ignored because now they’re being charged for water. If you don’t pay, they take away your legal right. In fact, they do that already. We have to identify this and get this very decision made in front of a judge, where we present this in a very solid manner, so that it can’t be ignored. That’s what Ian and I are really wanting to attain. We want a legal decision on what we’re identifying as what’s wrong.

This is an article in the most recent McLean’s magazine. And it’s an article about Beverly McLaughlin, if you know who she is.

Ian:

Sorry, no. No, she doesn’t. She was a past Supreme Court judge.

Mike:

She says this about her job, when they asked her what her job was when she was a Supreme Court judge. She says, “My job was to apply the law to rectify inequalities that were not justifiable under the Charter.”

Jenny:

Incredible.

Mike:

That’s what we want to do. We want to bring that attention to the point where a decision has to be legally made.

Jenny:

Brilliant. I just want to reflect what I heard. Mike and Ian, what you’ve offered is that the laws are being ignored. Everybody has a legal right to water. And the natural functions of the area are being affected 10 meters deep and 8 kilometers wide. That’s in your area, Ian.

We didn’t get into the specifics of yours, Mike. But regardless, we get the size and scope of these problems. And what I want to add is, I have an oil and gas background, hearings are not happening. Decisions are being made by people that don’t have the authority to make them. And what’s fascinating is there was just an article about the City of Calgary. APEGA is now reviewing some of the issues that we’re seeing in Calgary. So isn’t that interesting timing, right? Great opportunity to get APEGA to review some things elsewhere. Thank you so much, guys. And we’re going to let Neil start.

Neil:

Yes, like Ian and Mike, I, we’ve been talking extensively since the time we went up to Edmonton through the Legislative Assembly. Ian has been pushing this Section 60 of the Municipal Government Act. It took me a while to get my mind around it, the intensity and the depth of the act in itself. It takes, for an average person off the street, Ian and I, we talked about this, people around us, even in our community, have very little understanding of the depth of the act and what it actually means. And it has been manipulated by our municipalities. I have had a letter, under…Ian and I, we were talking…from our CAO, and he actually created a division of information from the Municipal Government Act, procrastinating their position on where they stand and where the AEP (Alberta Environment & Protected Areas) stands. It’s a mumbo jumbo of words.

Now, when I speak with Dale Christian, she says that an act cannot be disseminated. When an act is in place, it has to be followed. I have a letter, and this is what the municipality is driven by, they’ve created their own extension of the act. And they’ve been doing this since the 60s, to a point where they’re running, like they created a culture based on expropriation of Municipal Government Acts. I believe that we can put forward at least four Municipal Government Acts in our municipality that have been extrapolated. I’d like to focus on Ian’s Section 60 and see what we can do to manipulate…to generate an outcome from this.

What I can talk about with what we’re at during this appeal, people have gone through this. We’re dealing with an institution that is, like, a clam shut. And to integrate into the time that we generated, I believe, is probably time wasted, because we didn’t understand what was required. Now, their batting average, the AEP, is probably 99% in their favor.

The landowner has no advantage with this institution. All we did here was we tried to bring people together and poke the bear. If you don’t try, where are you? Now, there’s a lot of people that we spoke about in the area here that have a sense of apathy. When we started out with this pit, we had 140 signatures. Now we’re down to, if we’re lucky, we can get eight people on board. It’s dissolved. They created the dilemma. The municipality is totally inept behind all of this. They have created a culture to manipulate gravel extraction, basically.

Jenny:

Industry’s favor. It’s all about whatever industry wants. Nothing makes it to a hearing. Nothing goes towards a judge.

Neil:

Now, this Mr. Craig Canouse, that signed off on the water license for this particular pit, unfortunately, you’d have to see the video footage because he’s backed off to another gravel pit. Now, this particular guy, he’s an Alberta Energy Regulator. We’re all trying to figure out what his background is. He has signed off literally, just where I am with three gravel pits, he signed off on all the water licenses with a different definition for every source of water.

And we’re in with spitting distance, less than a quarter of a mile. And, you know, we’re in the headwaters of the Red Deer [River]. I’d like to challenge this guy’s credentials, how he can be a representative as an Alberta Energy Regulator and keep signing off on stuff and not being held accountable. Seriously, this guy is, I have no idea where he comes from.

Alex:

How long has he been in power? Sorry to interject.

Neil: Ian has, and Mike sent me a document, a couple of newspaper clippings, and I think, Ian, that went back to 2014.

Alex:

Because right at 2014, I’m looking at the MGA right now. There was stakeholder consultation that happened. And then in 2015, Bill 20 was passed. And then in 2016, Bill 21 was passed. And those were two amendments, like additional red tape. And then in 2017, Bill 8 was introduced, right? And then a new Municipal Governance Act was proclaimed. And then in 2018, the regulations were finalized, and there was ongoing advocacy for further [de]regulation. But they don’t have any information beyond what they’ve done in terms of amending the regulation and then reconstituting the act. They don’t have anything beyond 2018. The amount of amendments that they made to this is substantial. It’s huge. They made a lot of additional changes to stakeholder interests. And I’m particularly interested in the AUMAs analysis of Bill 8. So I might dive a little deeper.

Jenny:

Yeah, it’s all this municipal government not acting on behalf of population, but acting for industry as well, like this challenge that we’re seeing in all levels of government. Okay, Christina, is there anything you’d like to add in terms of introductions or shaping the problem for us? Thank you.

Christina:

I think all of our residents and municipalities are very similar in this room. Blatant disregard, regulations, laws and bylaws [ignored], all similar. The only thing I can see that wasn’t mentioned, but I’m sure this is on everyone’s mind, is health and quality in terms of quality of life and residents. The only thing also that I will add to sum up is, and I know Ian and myself also and Neil are working on it, the monetary loss, or detrimental loss, and how they’re defining that is of residents.

We’re supposed to define that in this appeal process, but they won’t define what detrimental loss is. They won’t come at it from, well, are we talking about health? Are we talking about quality of life? Are we talking about monetary loss in terms of our resident value? They won’t define that, so we have to define all three, and that can be difficult, in an appeal process, and we have to attack it from several different areas. When you’ve got eight people on an appellant list, not everybody can do that, so it’s ridiculous, but we’re doing that. I do have some questions for anybody in the room, but I don’t know if I should do that now.

Jenny:

Yeah, go ahead. I think that’s a great way to push us forward, keep going.

Artesian Wells and Gravel Pits Do Not Go Together

Christina: Okay, does anybody in the room know where I can find, if there’s an artesian well on a piece of property that’s relevant on a gravel pit? That artesian well shuts down a gravel pit within five kilometers. The artesian well takes precedence…becomes the precedence, shutting down all operations within five kilometers [of it]. Where do I find them?

Ian:

I haven’t been able to locate anything, and I had to drill a new well here at one time. I think it was probably about 20 years ago, and we do have an artesian well here now. We’re 65 foot into a buried channel that flows into the Onaway Aquifer, or to the bed and bank of the Sturgeon River, or the groundwater. I would love to know that too, and I am aware of an individual who is just about eight kilometers, six kilometers to the east of me, that lost their artesian well. And they are just within a couple of kilometers of strip mining activities.

Jenny:

And we should mention just for the broader public that, the City of St. Albert, which uses the Sturgeon River, is on water restrictions right now. Like, it’s 30% of flow, is that correct, Ian? Do you know?

Ian: The river flows through St. Albert, but it flows into Big Lake first, which is a provincial park, and then through St. Albert. But the last identification that I had of the Sturgeon River was almost no flow.

Jenny: I see, no doubt.

Ian:

Okay, but one important factor is there is a water license until 2044 that’s been approved by a professional engineer, and they’re allowed to dewater 250,000 cubic meters of water a day into the Sturgeon River, which is upstream from that water monitor. They can dewater surface and groundwater, aquifer is what’s identified, into the Sturgeon River daily. They can divert up to 250,000 cubic meters a day. And that is upstream from that water monitoring gauge in Villeneuve.

So that’s going to give a false reading, isn’t it?

Jenny: Oh, I see.

Ian:

And we have identified where they dewater into the Sturgeon River. From what we can identify, it does go through a number of settling ponds before it does go into the river.

Jenny: Okay.

Ian : There is a hydrogeological map available online, I could send you the link, that identifies the aquifers, also in the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor Groundwater Atlas. I don’t know, this is the first I’ve heard of it, but I’m not aware of it.

Neil:

Yeah, I gotta say I got this from a confidential source. I was told when we started with this whole appeal, is that I should have brought in a hydrogeologist to back up claims, which we didn’t. Also, I found out that there’s a letter out by Rebecca Schulz that’s current. I had sent in this Environmental Appeal Board, one from December of 2023, and there’s a new one out and I can’t find it. There’s also a drought mitigation study done by the AEP that’s out there. I can’t find it either.

And then also there’s been a release of the Red Deer River watershed basin study has been released. I went on to the Mountain View County site. I can’t find any of this stuff, but I’ve got these items as well as this big red, the big star and next to this artesian well, I was told by my source that if you could prove this, everything takes precedence over everything else. I haven’t contacted my source yet because it’s a complicated story. I can’t go into details because there’s anonymity involved in this.

But I was told this is how I should have proceeded, as well as talking to our MLA, which we did back in March, where there was 11 of us went into the MLA’s office. That’s Mr. Nixon’s office in Sundre, and we have had nothing back from him since. We started now sending consecutive letters asking for a response from our meeting with him in March. Now I found out through a source that he had literally given information to an individual how to approach the environmental appeal board. He took a lot of just trying to get into his face to find out. We neglected because we didn’t know how to proceed.

We were going through the proper channels, but we didn’t quite know how to navigate through the proper channels. So if this is right, wrong or indifferent, I can’t say. To win or lose, you could spend a huge amount of time with this Environmental Appeal Board or where we’re at or somebody that’s in there professionally, and they might take off to the 1% to be recognized.

Jenny:

Yeah, thank you, Neil. I’ll just say when I heard it, there is, you know, your MLA hasn’t responded. There’s a letter from Rebecca Schulz that’s current that, you know, sorry, what did the letter say? Can you remind me?

Neil: I believe it says similar to her last letter in December. It’s about how to proceed with stage five, stage six drought mitigation. And now I was reminded, but Christina told me that there’s Google problems out there because Google is under changes. We might not be able to find data the way we used to.

Jenny:

Fascinating times. Wow.

Neil:

That’s kind of that’s where we’re at here, which takes us to the next step with Ian and Mike’s pursuit of the Section 60. But I believe this is probably the way to go is to go take it to a higher level. This wheel spinning that we’re doing, it’s good to poke the bear. If you’ve got the time.

Alex:

Neil was this a letter? Was this the one July 8th, 2024?

Neil: It could be. I have very little knowledge except a few points. I talked to an individual at 10 o’clock at night two weeks ago and I haven’t heard anything back since. It’s 54 pages long, this letter. Is that the one?

Neil: That I don’t know.

Christina: Did you find it? July 8th, 2024?

Alex: Correct.

Jenny: Yeah, maybe email it to the to the group, Alex. Thank you. We can talk about that. Christina, did we answer you or was there another question?

Where are the drought mitigation studies?

Christina:

Well, drought mitigation study, we were looking for that if anyone had it. And there was one more, but Neil mentioned it. It was the Red Deer River Watershed Basin Study. Yeah, the Red Deer River.

Jenny: The model. Let’s see the outcome of the modeling, right?

Neil: Yeah, you know what the trouble is with this, how much stuff are we going to, we’ve got one more kick at pushing information into the Environmental Appeal Board, providing that the chair deems it acceptable. They’ve taken us over the point already, where we can’t submit any more data. And I argued with them so they give us a window of opportunity if they decide to look at it. I don’t know how much more we have to submit, like they’ve already made a decision. The problem was that West-Can put a letter out on July 18th and then they shut us down pretty much on July 25th. They did give us quite an extensive window in the earlier stages from June, because we submitted data, but I kept asking for extensions, but they would only give you two weeks at a time.

And nothing more. How can you put a timeline on some of this stuff?

Jenny:

Yeah, when the data is newer than the timeline was started kind of thing. Yeah, agreed.

Neil:

Yeah, they got tired of us.

Concerns About the Commodification (Confiscation Without Compensation) of Water

Jenny:

Like you said, it’s always this fast process, few people, as you said, Christina, they limit the number of people that can participate in this problem. It’s a lot of work for a very small group of people that are impacted. And it’s way beyond that. Like I just want to say again, eight kilometers wide, like this is a big, that is a lot of residents within that area. And it’s not being represented adequately in that way. And of course, that can be bigger depending on this drought condition that we’re in too. So, okay,

I want to flip back to you, Ian and Mike, can you guys talk a bit about this commodification of water that you were describing?

In our brief conversation ahead of this, you were talking about how people are losing their wells and they’re expected to put in a cistern, which I know, Neil, you guys can talk about this as well, but we’ll let them go first and then you can add to it, Neil. You can talk about the AHS recommendations from there when they’re done, that’d be awesome. Okay, go ahead, Ian.

Ian: Okay, just for an example, water was brought into Villeneuve and this is dated 2001. And the cost to bring the pipeline in was anywhere from 1.3 million to 2 million. So everyone in Villeneuve that lost water now has water plumbed into their homes at a cost, at a monthly cost. And just a little bit of information. So I questioned Sturgeon County about the number of active bulk water accounts within Sturgeon County at all of their bulk stations. So there’s 3,272 accounts, active accounts. [I asked] “Is there a maximum amount of water that an account can use per year?” Presently there’s no maximum allotment currently. However, administration is considering options on implementing maximum daily account allotments during water demand measure events. [I asked] “How much water is used per year at the bulk station?” They said about 208,904 cubic meters a year. I looked at that and I said, “What does an average family use in Edmonton?” And on EPCOR site, it says average household has 2.4 people and consumes about 18.5 cubic meters per month. In Sturgeon County that would equal 941 households, annually.

Jenny: Wow.

Mike:

This particular operation is done to allow development in the area to actually have no rules and regulations to follow because once they can get somebody locked into a system where they have to pay for the water, then they don’t have to worry about the groundwater and the surface water and the natural functions of the area, the general area. They can do that completely. Just an example is the Town of Wabamun. Lake Wabamun. They used to utilize the lake itself for drinking water, and wells, that were dependent upon inflow from the lake. They lost that capability and especially after the oil spill on the chain wreck that they had there. All of a sudden they are paying [for water], and they live on a lake. This is really crazy. They live on a lake and they pipe water from the City of Edmonton. In the Town of Onoway, as well, and all of this happening gives you an indication of somebody’s dream of what they can do to make a tremendous amount of money. If they can commodify water, which is a legal right, and take away that legal right that’s identified by law, then all of a sudden we become dependent. I hate to use the word a slave, but it’s not much different than that. If you don’t pay attention to what we do, we’ll shut your tap off.

Jenny: Yeah.

Mike:

We see that happening all the way through the area around Edmonton. Not just in the Sturgeon River water chain, it’s completely circulating in the city of Edmonton.

Jenny:

Okay, I just want to reflect back a bit what I heard there from you guys. What’s crazy is, my family has a cabin in northern Alberta, and this had just been occurring to me too, Island Lake, they have to truck in their water now. And, you know, it’s been curious to me that there isn’t water wells, instead. Like you said, right offsetting a lake that’s spring fed and all that. It’s very interesting to think about this being a very broad issue that people have just been slowly letting happen without thinking about. But Wabamun to be piping from Edmonton is bananas, and Onoway. This is definitely feeling like a commodification. I’m going to use a term from physics, the Law of Continuity. If something’s happening at small scale and it’s happening at a very large scale, then it’s happening at every scale in between.

That’s what we’re seeing here like Alex was describing this is an international problem. But we’re seeing it everywhere, I can say, confidentially, in Southern Alberta its the same thing, there’s a lot of water going around their town but they’re not really having access to it themselves. Meanwhile, we have an irrigation district that’s using a crazy amount of water. I think there’s a big broader issue happening. Did you want to add something there, Mike?

Mike:

If you actually achieve the commodification of water, then you don’t have to worry about any surrounding infrastructure or natural functions of groundwater, do you? You can utilize it in any way shape or form that you want now. You can understand that maybe cities suck. And that’s because they draw everything towards them. Now, they have to utilize everything within their area, or as close as possible. They keep the cost of building their city down as low as possible. The very second that they get you dependent on the city, then all of a sudden, you’re supporting the city. And you’re paying taxes for the city. You don’t see it in your municipal taxes, because they don’t change much. But the commodification of water is just nothing more than another tax.

That’s the direction that we have to be very careful here. We have to try and stop it at the legal level somehow. We have to get the decision of how these laws are being broken and how these logs are being ignored. And we have to get it in front of a judge. We have to do it somehow. Maybe this article in McLean’s magazine gives us a link of who we can talk to, because that woman, McLaughlin, seems to be reasonable. Because she says, in what her job was, is to correct the problems that she has at the lower levels. That’s what she says. Where it seems like laws are being broken. And that any laws that are not being adhered to have to be taken in front of a legal decision.

Otherwise, they don’t care anything, because the people that are making the large amounts of personal wealth or political gain are using them to be able to pull that money out of our system. And they don’t care if we don’t have any natural functions in our environment. So I think this is what we have to do. Somehow, we have to get the people together to understand they have a legal right to water, just like they have a legal right to air.

Alex: One really good example we could bring to the people is the Coquabamba Water War, also known as the Bolivian Water War, from December 1999 to April of 2000, where a private company by the name of Sempa decided to privatize commodified water to the extent that they would charge people down to the droplet. And the price of water exceeded a person’s daily average income for a glass. And within three days, the entire country went into revolt, and it became extremely violent, because people only had a certain amount of time to live, and they couldn’t afford a simple glass of water. There were government officials coming around and knocking over the rain barrels and then arresting them and finding them. It was really, really a bad situation. But the Bolivian Water Wars of 99 to 2000, if you look those up, that’s probably the best, most recent example of a highly cautionary tale, if we allow people to simply commodify these resources.

Jenny:

Thank you. There’s another example now moving down the scale in southern states. There’s a state that just had to fight back to get their water to be public again, pulling it back from private interests. So that might be a case to look at as well. But anyway, lots of stuff that we can pull together after this conversation.

Neil and Christina, can you offer some of your thoughts with respect to what are you seeing? Like Christina, if you could please explain some of the things that you’ve learned with wells around the area, please.

Christina:

Offer my what? Like the wells.

Jenny:

Neil mentioned that you’ve been door knocking and learning about what people are experiencing in their wells, in terms of contamination and things.

Christina:

Yeah, elevated chloroforms. I mean, some people sum that up to, you know, the well casing needs to be cleaned. Other things are lead and copper. But when we saw the test results of the of the test wells on the gravel pits, they have elevated lead and copper. And that’s current testing. When we asked for what what’s contaminating your test wells and in this appeal process, and we asked for the answers to those questions to the appeal board and to the company that owns those test wells. We got crickets.

Why would you allow this to go forward? If if you’ve got contaminated test wells, and it’s exact same things that are showing up in my water well, which is I’m the closest water well to their test wells. And it’s on a map. And it’s clear that I’ve got the clear I’ve got the closest test well, I’ve got the closest well to their test well. And I asked the question, okay, so you’ve got contamination that’s matching what I’m sure what’s showing up and then my neighbor behind me has even more contamination there further they’re not an appellant on the appeal.

And then we have, which is on three times the normal fluoride level just popped up out of nowhere. And they’re in as the crow flies within three kilometers of West Fraser, which is a pulp mill. And at one time, Joyce and I, right after we, we got word of this, we went on their website, we had a look at their MSDS for their treated lumber. And the MSDSs came back with fluoride, they were treating their lumber with fluoride, and they just place their, their treated lumber right on the ground.

Neil:

Yeah, I don’t believe they have barriers or anything that that, that facility goes back the 40, 50 years.

Christina: They just treat lumber over there and they sell treated lumber. We had AEP involved and we made an AER complaint and AEP complaint, and we had an investigator come out. And guess what those MSDSs. They were gone off their website. Gone.

Jenny: That’s crazy.

Alex:

Are there any soil samples taken to corroborate the water samples.

Christina:

I asked, “Did AEP go over there and take soil samples underneath and in around, and they said, all everything’s been investigated and the case is closed.”

Neil:

That was around the time that we were, we initiated, a bunch of 1-800 numbers, multiple complaints in this area, I’d say at least 12-16 multiple complaints.

Christina: Yes.

Neil: And during that period of time, a dismissive, Craig Canouse had updated the gravel pits just within our area dated around the same time that our complaints went in, I finally got an acknowledgement I asked for a follow up from the 1-800 numbers. And they said field officers were out there for two days, and they couldn’t find anything. And the reference numbers were closed. In the earlier days we talked about the berm that West-Can put in their pit, and this is where all the trouble started, is when they were hauling dirt in. It’s convoluted, mixed up, the county gave them an application, supposedly from West Fraser.

We got drone footage, the gravel pit next door was supplying them top soil. We asked for, I talked to the compliance officer and asked for the dirt sample. I said, “Isn’t it practical to take a sample first, before you move the dirt.” And he said, “No, we’ll move the dirt and soil sample to follow.”

After that, Christina had a conversation with Larry West from the AEP. I guess he’s got four or five people working for him and they discussed, you discussed soil samples for that berm. And then that sort of just went, it all disappeared. And what happened with us now is that with our AER complaints with fracking, with the AEP complaints, and with our MLA, it’s all gone dark.

Christina: Yeah.

Neil: They’re not communicating. Don’t forget this area is a high money making corner for gravel companies. We’ve got eight gravel pits within six kilometers.

Jenny:

Yeah, thank you for reminding the scale, Neil.

Neil:

Yeah, we got shot down here.

Alex:

That soil’s got to go somewhere though, does anyone know where the dump site is?

Christina:

Say again?

Alex:

That soil has to go somewhere, right? Does anyone, because they replaced the soil so that you couldn’t take an accurate sample. But they extracted the soil before you could take the sample. I’m just wondering what the dump site is because it has to go somewhere, right?

Christina:

The only soil sample that was taken was from West Fraser, I phoned West Fraser. My alias is Beverly Sting. I phoned them as Beverly Sting and I asked if West-Can was taking soil from their site. And they said only a little bit and they had paperwork from Mountain View County, allowing them, giving approval, for them to take a little bit of dirt. And I have drone footage. We both have drone footage of them taking soil from mostly from Saunders right next door and no soil samples were ever taken from Saunders.

Neil:

It just all disappeared. All this communication side, the requests just went totally dark. Don’t forget that Saunder’s gravel pit borders right on West-Can. Right there. Right there and they’re using the berm as a dike. Saunders actually created a little pond just adjacent to West-Can. They’re in cahoots with each other. This is like you could spit across both of these pits. This is how connected they are. And then of course you have Lafarge across the road and they’re just been washing rock for a long time, as well. Taking all the water.

Jenny:

With this episode we’ll share a map that I know you’ve given me, Neil. I’m going to make sure I include it with this episode when I post it. Okay, Dale and Adele, I apologize. I got fancy and couldn’t see you had been waiting in the wings. I apologize. What we did was we talked about what brought you here. You guys were on last time so we have that benefit so that’s okay. What your current problem is if you want to give some color, Neil and these guys have offered that we’re seeing natural function being totally ignored.

You know, don’t even need to think about it. Commodification of water. We’ve talked a little bit but I know, Dale, you know a lot about the groundwater versus river water distinction, like how they do these applications. I don’t know if that’s what you want to talk about but you certainly could bring that into the conversation if you wanted to. If you want to just sort of outline your problem and what you’re doing right now to address it?

Dale:

Well, I’d like to just address Neil’s question for a minute or his speech. When he was talking about the Red Deer River study, was he talking about the STANTEC, a Red Deer River basin flood mitigation study that was done by STANTEC in 2014? Is that what you meant?

Neil:

All I know is that from my source and we had a late night conversation, she told me that the Red Deer River watershed study has just been released.

Dale:

So, that would be a different study.

Neil:

That’s not STANTEC, because the last year of Area Structure Plan was holding the STANTEC information. And it’s just recently I found out that the new one has been released. I can’t get my hands on it, I don’t know where it is.

Dale: This is something that the Red Deer River Watershed Alliance put together?

Neil:

I’m not sure. When we did our Area Structure Plan, when we spoke, we asked Mount Buick County to provide the latest study for the Red Deer River watershed. And at that time, there was another study, but it was in working, it was in progress. And my source now told me that one has been released.

Red Deer River Gravel and Freshwater Concerns From 30-Year Watershed Stewards

Jenny: Okay, Dale, please go ahead and explain some of your issues or what you’d like to share with us today. And you too, Adele, if you’re there to weigh in.

Dale: Well, I don’t know if you want the specifics of where we are at this time with our EAB appeal. I think it’s nowhere. We asked for a stay, because it is futile to say, you can go ahead and take all the surface land off, strip all the soil off, and find the face of the aquifer. But you can continue to do that. You’re allowed to strip the whole thing. And then maybe we’ll decide whether or not, based on your appeal, whether or not we can go in and take the gravel. They’ve already opened the face to contamination. There’s no doubt there. And the interesting part is the surface water and the groundwater are one water.

Everybody in the entire world knows that except Alberta. And it’s just expedient for them to say, you know, this is groundwater. Oh, that’s below the surface. That’s groundwater. Oh, this is above the surface. This is surface water. What they’ve been doing is they’ve been calling any surface water when you say, well, okay, you’re interfering on an aquifer with the river. There’s water there. You’re diverting water. You don’t have a license. You’re messing it up. Then they say, no, we’re calling that surface water runoff. Todd Aeson and his ilk are calling it that. They’re bending all of the definitions outside of the Water Act or in the Water Act, the spirit of the Water Act and what it says and the EPEA, too. They’re bending it to fit industry.

What we found out is every time we bring up some rules, there’s a rule that says that. They all we and they come back and say, oh, yeah, but there’s a policy that so-and-so just passed like SWAB Act, Surface Water Body Aggregate Policy. That’s my question to everyone. Where does a policy that has not been run through, has not been run through Parliament, where does it take precedence over an existing Water Act?

That SWAB Act policy, somebody referred to this 2017 targeted stakeholders gathering where we talked about the change to allow them to take gravel out of aquifers. I know that it never went farther than that. All the people that were from environmental groups, fisheries, every hydrologist that came said, yep, back off, get out of the aquifers. Your alluvial aquifers provide all the water for recharge, but they also prevent flood with the discharge.

Fill the aquifer, empty the aquifer, that’s our water! Eleven times as much as you see in that little blue line. Valley wall to valley wall is full of water and the potential to hold clean and keep cold that water. It’s not news, they know that, but what they’ve done is they’ve been trying all along to obfuscate what’s reality. I mean, they will argue water does not run downhill. And they will argue that there’s no hydraulic pressure in a river and it’s aquifer pushing the water to the cones of influence, where all these people have their water wells. Cleanest most beautiful water ever because it’s purified by sand and gravel. It’s idiocy, but it is all idiocy that has been slowly moved towards favor of industry no matter what. People don’t count industry counts. The EAB says “No, we don’t need to stay. We’re going to let them, go ahead, strip all this topsoil off.”

And we said, or a lawyer said, “No, we’ll appeal that EAB statement. Well what we’ve got now is Howell’s lawyer, of course, lawyers, yelling, screaming bloody murder and they…it went to a judicial review, sorry. he judicial review, I think it was Justice Price said, “No, we understand what the [landowners position].

Adele:

Yeah, it went to an emergency hearing with the judge. And the first judge said, “Yes. She agreed that they should not be stripping the topsoil and that overburdened. And they basically didn’t stop, they just ignored it and kept going because their contention was overburdened and topsoil isn’t part of the aquifer and it’s not part of the area covered by the license, by the water, the registration and the license. So we had to go back a second time and the second judge supported the first judge and said, “no, you need to stop.” And they did stop. And they’re, they’re currently stopped. The EAB, did not agree to a stay. [This EAB hearing is] supposed to be happening on next Thursday, August 15th. But the appeal isn’t happening then. There’s just a, this judicial, another judge is going to get to look at how the decision was made by the EAB, so far so good.

Part of why we went for it is because we launched that appeal the day after the election last year, because that’s when we got the announcement that they’d been approved and we still have yet to have our appeal. So we’re 17 months late or whatever, 16 months later. And our contention is, and they’re saying, “oh no, you don’t need a stay. They can keep working away until the appeals heard.” And we’re saying, “No, by then the damage is going to be done and you can’t go backwards. And so that’s why we ended up going, having these two runs past the judge to finally get them stopped. The other thing that we’re doing sort of parallel is John and I are funding a judicial review of the decision by the AEP.

Dale: Yes, you said it right.

Adele:

The thing on the 15th is another judge reviewing our presentation state, our case that states to not grant us a stay until the appeal is heard, basically is going to make the appeal. Because by the time they get the rate they’re going by the time we get the appeal, they’ll have done all the damage that they can do and then what difference does it make it happen to get an appeal. So, yeah, so far, two judges for McKechnie and crew.

Jenny:

Okay, go ahead and add something Dale and then we’ll go into some like how can the public help us. So if you can lead us off in that after to Dale like what do you want the public to know and how can we make sure that they’re ready to support, whatever comes out of this work that you’re doing, keep going.

Dale:

Well, the public are not aware of what happens is it goes to the, to the municipal municipality, and it enters that dark room of the CEO, which is the BS chamber, and out of that comes, “oh, but we will do this or we will do that,” which basically is nothing. Then they go ahead and they, you know, pat your head and this should all be good, we’re going to do something called a gravel overlay. And therefore then everybody in the Red Deer County area will know where gravel pits are.

Well, when they did that, they took all the pits from forever back and put that in the overlay. Then they put ones that had ever been applied for and put them in the overlay. And their, their justification is, well when anybody in this area goes to buy property within this overlay, they will know there’s going to be a potential gravel pit and so they won’t, won’t buy it. Well that’s, that didn’t work because real estate agents depend on not them people not knowing there’s going to be a gravel pit there, and, and we’ve seen some beautiful evidence of that. And also, the grandfathering in of all of those pits. So, let’s go back to before there was no rules, and you could just put a gravel pit anywhere. All those are grandfathered in. I was invited to the targeted stakeholders thing in 2017. And what we, I have proof that Alberta Environment says, “We do not interfere on gravel pits on private land. Municipalities make those decisions.” That’s where that supposed to stop is at the municipal level. Well, the municipal level is not going to stop when they’re being those counselors, how are is being insured by all those large industries with all the money, which leaves us as individuals on the landscape, trying to pay to protect environment for future generations.

Yes our own. Lately, when we challenged the state. They came at us with lawyers from the EAB with lawyers from Albert environment with lawyers Howell’s multiple lawyers. And when we go to EAB and I’ve been to them. There will be us sitting there with our one lawyer that we can ill afford, and our one expert that we can afford, and they will bring in a barrage of short skirts and flippy faces and the whole nine yards, and with a timeline where we can’t speak so they get five times as much because they got five times as many lawyers. It is just set up for us to fail, set up for environment. I think what we have to do is point out to everybody that municipalities have given themselves, the identity, identity of a corporation and under being corporation. They get to limit any kind of FOIP that we [request].

Friends of ours just got FOIP from Red Deer County, paid a huge amount for that and got a whole mess of blank pages! They could have been told when there’s nothing there to read, so don’t do it. There’s the issue with setback, when they say, “Well, we’ll make the setback a little bigger.” That’s so much bullshit. The setback is always on the adjacent property from their foundation of their house.

Jenny: Right!

Dale: Does it sound like fairness that you, the landowner, who’s existing landowner who’s been there forever paid the taxes, has to supply the setback for that gravel company. The comment I heard and discussion from one of the municipal counselors was, well, they’ll only have to have a gravel pit right in the middle of a quarter. Well, ain’t that too bad? Right. Yeah. I mean, nobody says, “Oh, Dale, here’s your cows here and you need a setback. We’ll provide the setback.” They don’t do that.

Jenny: Right.

Dale: You have to own that property. So we’re facing it so, so many things that are just totally wrong and totally manipulated. And like Neil said, when they can’t argue with you anymore, they just go dark. You used to have to reply to our letters.

Jenny:

Well, to get an entire FOIP back, I understand it was like 150 pages where it was all blacked out is just bananas.

Dale: I don’t know how many pages, but I know what happened to me. It’s happened to Adele. It’s happened to Jody.

Jenny:

Well, and it’s happening on the coal mining file too. And that’s being fought right now as well. So, okay. Thank you so much, Dale. Adele, did you have any sort of final words before we let everybody do a quick call to the public? Like you mentioned your thing on the 15th. If there’s something that you want us to let people know about after that, please let us know. I’ll leave you with that. But is there anything else you want to add?

Adele:

Probably not a lot to add other than, you know, I think it was Neil that summed it up really well about when we said about how everything is just, it’s the law, the rules. There’s two sets of rules. There’s the set for those of us everyday citizens and there’s those for industry. And that’s been our contention for a long time now and it just seems to be getting worse.

Jenny:

I feel you Adele. Thank you so much for that. Thank you for sharing everything that you guys are doing. Okay. Ian and Mike, can you please offer your calls for the public or what you want us to make sure we push out from this conversation and then we’ll move to the Sundre Area.

Offers and Asks of the Public

Ian:

Okay. I do have a few comments. First of all, FOIP IT FOIP IT! We have Alberta public employees paid with public money that won’t provide us information, won’t answer our questions.

1. We have municipal governments granting immunity to law, to industry. They’re granting immunity. They’re grandfathering land use. And then also the largest strip mining activity that we’re seeing that’s adversely affecting water presently is the oil sands.

2. Number two: sand and gravel or aggregate in Alberta.

3. Number three is coal.

We need attention brought to what’s happening here. This is a major, major issue. Also, to keep from having using or enduring one statutory right, section 21 in the water after freedom to use water, the basic necessity of life cannot be mitigated, compensated, or remedied by any monetary award or compensation. According to the public lands act section 54 prohibitions, it identifies irreparable harm. No person shall. So purposely ignoring the municipal imposed duty by our municipal elected officials. According to section 60 of the municipal government act during land use planning creates a bylaws inconsistent with federal and provincial legislation and the denies access to a statutory rate to household users as described at section 21 of the water act. And as the judge said, it’s an inequality and not just a viable under the charter of rights and freedoms. We need to bring this forward in a legal manner so it can no longer be ignored. There’s got to be somebody out there that’s willing to step up. And do this. This is for all humanity, Mike?

Mike:

Exactly. <sigh> Back in the 1990s. I had my tour with the appeal board. And it was obvious that, and it was the same guy that you guys are dealing with right now, Gilbert Van Ness, he’s been in there a long time. When we reviewed their success rate at upholding the decisions of the of Alberta Environment. We came across the documentation that it was something like 97% success rate and upholding the rules or the decisions of Alberta Environment. You can see this is a pattern that is going on and on and on. Now it’s all based on money. So the only thing that you can possibly do is to try and get something in front of somebody that is a legal identified as a legal or an illegal act.

I can’t accept somebody that says that they’re going to disobey the law in a set of laws for Alberta, Section 60 of the Municipal Government Act. And you’re going to be able to ignore that and disobey that to the point of destruction to the natural functions of groundwater and surface water.

We have a manual that was created by the country’s…

Ian: Canadian Geological Survey.

Mike: The Canadian Geological Survey. We have this document.

Ian: Canada’s Groundwater Resources.

Mike: It’s called Canada’s Groundwater Resources. It’s a manual that’s made up of almost a thousand pages. It beautifully identifies all of the natural functions of groundwater within the Dominion of Canada. It tells you everything. It even points up as a map of Alberta and it identifies the very sensitive areas that are within the province. This is information that’s real. I mean, it’s been studied and it’s been authenticated because this is a professional individual. His name is…

Ian: Alphonse Rivera.

Mike: I have that book. I bought it the minute it was published. And it says how important groundwater is and everything that could possibly identify the natural functions of how groundwater works and the natural purification possibilities.

Nobody seems to pay any attention to this very informative document. Nobody seems to ever refer to it. And these are professionals we’re talking about now. And it’s been a known fact. I’ve been in engineering in all my life. And I know this for a fact. And it was stated to me before and identified at a very early time, early in my career, in 1962 actually. That the natural functions are the people that control things did not like to be disturbed in the way they have developed their right or what they think is their enabling right to do anything that they want as long as money is being made.

The only thing that we can possibly do is try and identify the weakest point that they have that we can get some document, like something simple. It seems like Section 60 should be really simple to bring right up in front to say, “Who has the direction, control and management of water.” Nobody will tell you.

Jenny:

Right. They all do this. <point to someone else>

Ian: Yeah.

Mike:

Does that mean nobody? Does nobody have direction, control and management of water? And yet in the law books of the Municipal Government Act, Section 60 says that in that Section 60, and it also makes the statement of subject to other enactments, there’s the Public Lands Act and all of those things that identify all the problems that are being created by ignoring those laws.

How do we get those laws in front of somebody that can bring it in front of a judge and say, are these laws? And are they, do they have to be upholder? Can they be ignored? Why can’t we do that? Why can’t we get some lawyer? But here’s the thing, and it happened in engineering. If you do anything in the province of Alberta that’s going to impact the economy in any way, shape or form, you won’t work. That’s right. As a professional. Just like that.

Jenny: I feel you. I’ve been there.

Mike:

How do we get around that? Now, we’ve got a good group here. Okay. There’s got to be a weakness somewhere. We’ve been at this. Dale, it’s nice to see you. I’m glad to see you again. And your tenacity is wonderful. I think it’s beautiful. It gives me encouragement that somewhere along the line, somebody is going to find that weak spot. And when they find that goddamn weak spot, we got to put it in front of somebody’s face and they can’t ignore it.

We got to think about that. Surely, there’s somebody with enough moxie or ability that’s a very professional that can bring that up so that it can’t be ignored. Because we can’t ignore this. This is part of our existence. This comes from the creator. And the mother of the earth. I get kind of wound up on this

Jenny:

It’s both remarkable to hear you guys speak. How knowledgeable you are, how intelligent you are, how much you’ve been through the ringer at the same time. It’s just it’s so hard to because it’s both uplifting and also awful to experience at the same time because it’s so much bad stuff happening with our water that you guys are aware of that we need to deal with.

Mike:

Ralph Klein said one thing. Ralph Klein said one thing when he was Premier. He says, come to Alberta. We’ve got energy to burn. Where the hell do you get the energy from?

Jenny: The water.

Mike: You’ve got to dig a hole in the ground. Then you’ve got to build office towers to build to have power.

Neil:

I totally agree with Ian and Mike about the Section 60 and try to promote it. I think we have to take this up a notch above and beyond where we’re at now. The hours that we put in for this environmental appeal board is it’s it’s it’s wiping us out here. I can say of taking away my entire summer. You know, this kind of stuff like I don’t know what to say.

Jenny: A hundred percent.

Neil:

What I was thinking, Ian and I, we talked about a class action lawsuit.

Jenny: Right.

Neil: Yeah. To pursue like if you can pull up a legality behind all of this: call these guys “environmental terrorists.”

Christina: Isn’t this real?

Neil: Can we can we just go to the RCMP station and say, I’m charging this municipality with environmental terrorism. With the intent to to aggregate our lifestyle and harm our water supply, which creates health issues, maybe concurrently towards death.

Christina: Is that a thing?

Neil: I just thought about some wake up in the middle of the night, some of the stuff.

Mike:

Here’s the situation. OK, it’s really, really simple. Consider yourself living in a cul de sac in a town or a city. OK, you got a whole bunch of people living in the cul de sac. You’re on the part of the cul de sac that’s close to the exit to the main drive. And there’s this individual in the cul de sac that keeps driving past your house and you have grandchildren or children around and they’re breaking the speed limit all the time, going to and from work. And they’re an RCMP. So who do you arrest? Because he won’t quit doing it or not. It doesn’t have to be an RCMP. Let’s say it’s a CAO who’s breaking the law continuously. Every time you come to him, he’s breaking the law. So all you have to do is figure out how to start this issue. Start this issue of identifying these individual by name and putting it in the local paper. Things like that.

Anything that will bring attention to the idiot that’s sitting up there and telling you that everything’s OK and that they can grandfather a gravel pit.

Jenny:

Interesting. I think this is something to explore for sure.

Neil: I just want to reiterate, like Christina and I are blacklisted from our local newspaper.

Christina: Yes.

Neil: Her and I tried to put the editorials in three times.

Christina: Winning.

Neil: It got rejected by our local newspaper guy and went up to the senior editor and to this very day the letter is still sitting there not approved. Same story. So what they’re doing is they’re not only not only are they put us off into silent running and forgetting everything that we’ve said and done, they’re cutting off our ability to create media sensation here as well as like I said, our MLA so far has not communicated us since the beginning of March when 11 of us walked in with an agenda to discuss the problems with the water, as well as a second agenda to meet with with Rebecca Schulz and and Danielle Smith and that nothing came out of this whole thing. So now we’re banging out emails to see if we can get their attention.

Jenny:

Dale if you guys have anything else to add before we close, please go ahead now.

Dale:

Well, what I’d like to see I mean, tried all these measures it looks like we’ve been down every mouse maze hole there is there, and they just keep slamming the door shut just before we get to the cheese. So what I would like to see is I’d like to see everybody, as many as can come to any EAB. Because that’s where the buck stops is at the environmental appeal board. And yes, it’s a setup and the whole nine yards. But if everybody could support everybody that goes to the EAB.

I don’t say no you can’t come in, or at least not in my experience they let me in. So, if everybody could make a concerted effort to support each other. I like, I like that class action lot lawsuit. I do, and I heard it mentioned in 2017. Over and over and over again, and then putting the rivers into frac lines and graveling out our reservoirs, our aquifers. I mean, that’s just so backward. I wish we could all get on the same message at groundwater and surface water are the same water, and there aren’t making anymore.

And what you are wasting now you’re depriving of your, your grandchildren down the road, or maybe in your children.

Jenny:

Thank you. I’m thinking we need to do some letters to the editor, get some help from other areas because you’re right. You can’t do it right on sometimes but maybe you can embarrass from afar. And the one thing I just want to say you said Neil which is really important is we have to upscale our efforts, like you said, we got to ratchet it up. Absolutely. Did you have one final thing before closing?

Neil:

You had mentioned a while back because we’ve been pretty busy here that you had a letter that you wanted to provide to some newspaper people right to media.

Jenny:

Yeah, out of this, we’re going to write an article and we’re going to try and get some letters to the editor going is what I’m picturing. Everybody here has done a lot of the writing for us, I can see. So, we’ll get something drafted and we’ll get this out as many media sources that we can. And yeah, we’ll go from there. I heard you Dale say we have to…You guys, please provide us with your schedule of your meetings, because like you said, Dale, I’m happy to support if I can be there for any appeal, hearings, or things like that.

Ian: Let us know Dale, let us know I can start driving next week.

Jenny: Please let us all know those things and I’ll include that in the, in the, this episode. Okay.

Ian: Let us know, Dale, let us know I can start driving next week.

Neil:

How about instead of us providing a letter, if we can latch on to a newspaper outlet, and let the editor interview us that kind of eliminates us from providing data to them. You know, because how many multiple letters do we have to provide for…

Jenny: Fair enough. Okay, yeah, I’ll think about that now. Yeah, we could go that route.

Christina: You know what editors are lazy, and they end up writing bullshit.

Jenny: Yeah, I’m happy to take a shot at it. Yeah.

Neil: Okay.

Christina:

I’ve seen, just recently, I seen an article that was absolute, and it came from the Mountain View County that was actually supporting us. Unless you read the letter. It was, it was garbage. The heading was garbage. And then they, they, they wrote some things that were supporting South MacDougal Flats about our alluvial aquifer, but the heading was garbage, and the article was garbage. A fairy tale, it was a fairy tale, missing information. And I was like, Bill, who was it?

Neil: Dan Singleton.

Christina: What an asshat.

Alex: I’m just wondering Jenny if maybe we should create a Substack account, because then we can actually publish the full letters.

Mike: You have to understand that the municipalities of the local papers, the local papers working, are a contributor to that local paper, because you notice a lot of large advertising from the county, and, and the MLA that are in the area, they get to add the fund or their funding goes to those papers. So you understand that those papers are under control, too.

Ian: Thank you everyone.

Jenny: Thank you so much. Alex, I wasn’t sure if you wanted to say the final words? Have a good night. Take care for now.