Letters
To Farm & Country
Crippling bylaws
Municipal nutrient management bylaws stand to cripple Ontario's livestock farms. If municipalities limit the number of livestock units a farmer can have, then they are in effect freezing farmers' incomes. The politicians and municipalities must also freeze farmers' property taxes.
These bylaws in effect devalue a farm's property value; they also infringe on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - that is they do not allow the full use of a farmer's property to maximize his income to pay ever-increasing municipal taxes and farmer input costs.
These same municipal politicians do not limit the size of the complaining urban transplants who build their upscale mansions in the countryside. Neither do they put a limit on the amount of income these urban transplants can earn. Also: These same bureaucrats and politicians are continually, arbitrarily, giving themselves pay and salary raises. I see a double standard in the making.
We farmers and particularly the Ontario Federation of Agriculture must become more militant. Enough of this being a nice guy to transplanted urban snobs.
Peter Grandoni
Niagara Falls
Update
Further to Washed out - Farmer seeks legal recourse to watercourse woes (Feb. 1):
Five Brant county farmers are suing a Brantford-area developer for flooding damage linked to drainage from a nearby subdivision.
In a statement of claim filed March 31 by Nepean agricultural lawyer Donald Good in Woodstock provincial court, the farmers are seeking a combined $3 million in damages plus legal costs from developer Annspel Holdings Ltd. Damages include $500,000 for property damage to each of the three properties affected, $100,000 per plaintiff for "health impacts, including stress," "punitive damages" of $1 million, and any remediation costs. The farmers also seek a permanent injunction stopping the developer from altering the natural drainage flow.
The suit is a last recourse for 60-year-old Brant cattleman Howard Summerhayes, whose battle for compensation for flooding of his farmland stemming from ongoing development on Brantford's northwest tip was documented in the Feb. 1 issue of the magazine. Also suing the developer is his 87-year-old mother Isabel Summerhayes, and neighbouring farmers John and Sandra Martin and James Baldwin.
In their statement of claim, the farmers say the developer illegally diverted subdivision storm water onto their properties by discharging it into the farm drainage system, causing unprecedented water flows across the three properties, severe erosion, flooding, and loss of cropping income; and interfering with the landowners' "use and enjoyment of their respective lands."
Flowing from the subdivision's pavement, the water carries "contaminants to the Plaintiffs' foodlands," it says.
The claim cites common law prohibiting surface water from being collected and diverted to land that wouldn't normally receive it.
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Don't get drilled
The fine print in standard oil and gas leases can bring farmers
more grief
than liquid gold
BY TOM BUTTON
It's tempting, Leonard McMurphy agrees. A rep from an oil exploration company drives up your laneway and offers you $10 an acre just so he can make you more money by finding oil or natural gas storage pockets under your land.It's so tempting, in fact, that McMurphy estimates more than 90 per cent of farmers sign the leases at their kitchen tables without consulting a lawyer. Most don't even try to read all the fine print themselves.
If they understood what they're signing, McMurphy believes, they'd tell the company to get packing and not come back until they're prepared to make a deal that's as fair to the farmer as it is to the drillers.
McMurphy is president of the Gas Lease Landowners of Ontario (GALLO), started in December by a dozen south Lambton farmers. Leasing activity is picking up in the province, especially with demands for more natural gas storage wells and with a proposal for a major new pipeline to carry Alberta gas into New York.
Part of McMurphy's concern is getting fair compensation for farmers. At a recent meeting with seven Parkhill neighbours, all of whom had negotiated their own deals with an oil leasing company, attendees discovered their base fees ranged from $2 to $7 per acre, and royalties on oil discovered on the property went from three to 7.5 per cent.
Still, McMurphy and GALLO public relations chair Jerry Burns are even more concerned about the fact that farmers are giving the companies too much control over their land.
Burns, who has three farms in the Tupperville area, signed a lease on one of those farms last year. "I'm the same as 95 per cent of the others," Burns says. "This chap came round three or four times, I was busy, and I just ended up signing the thing....I know now that wasn't a very smart thing to do."
Instead, Burns says, he should have taken the lease to a lawyer - "a lawyer who specializes in gas and oil leases. If you go to a regular lawyer, it's like going to an optometrist for a sore throat."
GALLO took a copy of a standard lease offered by one leasing company, Elliott's Land Services Ltd. of Grand Bend, to Paul Vogel, petroleum lease specialist with the London legal firm Cohen Highley Vogel & Dawson.
With Vogel's help, GALLO has identified eight key areas for farmers to watch when considering signing an oil drilling or gas storage lease:
Facilities location
Indefinite lease extensions
Pooling and unitization
Damages and indemnity
Abandonment
Drainage
Default and compensation
Dispute resolution
GALLO is continuing to work toward a standardized lease, McMurphy says. "Today's lease was developed by and for the exploration companies," he says. "It's very one-sided."
Plus, McMurphy says, the lease is being pushed by leasing agents
whose job
is to obtain the rights to the property - not to get the best
possible deal
for the
farmer.
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Environmental liabilities raise oil and gas ante
The environmental costs of allowing oil and gas exploration on
your farm
can be very serious. Spills and leaks can take valuable land out
of
production and be expensive to clean up. Unless the lease with
the oil
company is very explicit, it may be difficult and expensive to
force them
to clean up their mess.
The problems that can arise from an oil or gas exploration include spills of petroleum products and salt solutions, fumes, waste disposal and abandoned wells and buildings. Owning land that has been contaminated is sufficient to make the owner liable for the clean-up under environmental protection legislation. Although this may sound unfair, the Ministry of Environment has the power to order land owners (you, the farmer) to clean up contamination left by someone else.
Furthermore, the oil and gas legislation defines "operator" in such a way that if the oil company that does the exploration goes bankrupt, the land owner becomes the "operator." As an operator, the farmer/land owner is responsible for capping the well. Therefore, if an exploration company were to go bankrupt, the farmer would be required to not only clean up its environmental damage, but also plug the wells, all at the farmer's cost. (If you find yourself in this situation, there is a fund that may be available to pay for some of the costs of capping the wells. The monies are from a pool oil and gas outfits are obliged to pay into.)
The only way to protect yourself from these types of liabilities is to allow a lawyer to review the lease to make sure you are protected. At a minimum, any lease should contain clauses:
- Prohibiting the company from storing or disposing of waste on your property.Getting a small proportion of the profits of a well on your land is bad enough; don't let the oil company leave you with the cost for cleaning up their mess as well.- Requiring the company to clean up all contamination.
- Requiring the company to leave the property in the same condition as they found it (remove buildings and other structures).
Anthony E. Fleming practices environmental law with Loopstra Nixon in Toronto. He can be reached at (416) 746-4710
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