Re: Surface Rights Board hears local case by Terri Eger, Friday, June 5, Virden-Empire Advance
Some past history:
The Manitoba Surface Rights Board listened to the case of area farmer, Gaston Van As, and five other cases that were scheduled to be heard at Virden, MB. This was an article published
in the Ottawa Citizen paper. It was July 4, 1984.
Now, 31 years later, landowners, and farmers are still disgruntled and frustrated, only more so, as it concerns remuneration in exchange for the oil wells and batteries established on their
property that they have to work around. Establishments that they had no choice to refuse.
There are very few farmers/landowners today in Manitoba who can defy industrial companies the right to enter their land, for it all comes down to
“Who has the mineral rights.”
It is basically a situation as headlined by the (MSRA) Manitoba Surface Rights Association:
“Uninvited industrial users on our land, paying agriculture rates and leaving us the industrial waste.” That is exactly what Mr. Carlyle Jorgensen was presenting at the Manitoba Surface Rights Board
hearing in Virden. I attended that meeting on Tuesday, May 12 as an interested person.
It was held in the old upper courtroom of the Aud Theatre building. Lease rentals and the extra hours, time, and money being spent on working around headlands, lease roads, and oil installations,
with no recognition of compensation were the main items addressed, with well-presented highlights. There were also concerns expressed of the general untidiness of some oil company installations,
and of garbage being left for the winds to blow around.
John Fefchak,
Virden, Manitoba
