At the CTF's "Beers and Bipole" event, I met Pam Pugh and her husband Bill; owners of a family farm just west of Portage la Prairie.

Their farm will be directly impacted by the Bipole III line as it will cut right through the middle of their land.

During a discussion about the issue, Pam said something pretty shocking. She said that when they met with Minister Wowchuk back on October 27, 2010 to discuss Bipole III, they discussed how a new power line on their farm will disrupt crop dusters. You can imagine that a field with few obstacles is much easier to spray than one with power lines and other obstacles on it.

Incredibly, the Minister suggested to them that the planes could just fly under the lines.

It's no secret that I don't have any experience with crop dusting, but even I suspected it was illegal for crop dusters to fly under power lines; something Bill and Pam confirmed. The comment wouldn't be so shocking if it wasn't for the fact that Minister Wowchuk previously served as Agriculture Minister.

For those that need a quick visual of what can go wrong when planes hit power lines, check out this video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoehnHPYcHw&feature=related

Anyway, for the city folks that read this blog, below is a shot Pam provided of just how low crop dusting planes have to fly. Bill informed me that even the existence of such lines on farm land can mean that crop dusting companies avoid servicing those farms; or put them at the bottom of the list. Thus, some crops might be off limits in the future for their family.

It's true that farmers will receive a payout from Hydro in exchange for having the huge hydro towers on their property. However, one also needs to consider that once the land has been sacrificed in favour of giant hydro towers, farmers are going to see a loss of income from that land.

Bill expects that it will only be a couple years before the one time payment is wiped out by lost income from land taken over by Hydro. Not only that, but he expects his insurance costs to go up due to the potential of farming equipment bumping into the huge hydro towers.

Unfortunately, if a west Bipole route proceeds, many other Manitoba farm families will be facing the same situation as the Pughs. Hopefully this gives you a bit of insight into what they're up against.

By: Colin Craig
Posted: July 05, 2011
Topic: Manitoba

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