Some farmers in eastern Ontario are concerned their land will be expropriated to expand the Casselman Water Treatment Plant.
Until recently, they did not even belong to that municipality. Now, Casselman has annexed part of their land from The Nation.
“Since 1871 we have been paying our taxes entirely to La Nation,” said Louis Racine, fifth generation owner of Ferme Racine. “Now, for nothing, they decide to take away our land, give it to the municipality of Casselman and that might cause our death. We will die because we need all of our land to survive. That is shocking!”
‘We might as well step away’
Between Ottawa and Quebec in eastern Ontario, The Nation municipality covers a swath of the rural land. It surrounds Casselman, a village along highway 417.
Casselman’s water treatment plant is struggling to meet demand, according to a report by the municipality in May. High levels of manganese have periodically turned the municipality’s water brown for more than a decade.
The report offered several possible solutions. One was to expand the water treatment plant, which would require purchasing land from the Nation Municipality.
In September, Casselman submitted, and The Nation accepted a request to annex some of its land “to potentially allow for future expansion.”
According to the The Nation’s mayor, Francis Brière, just because Casselman has annexed the land doesn’t mean expropriation is guaranteed.
He said that The Nation agreed to the trade because, if the expropriation is approved, it will go ahead regardless of which municipality it falls in.
“We might as well step away from this process and let Casselman have to deal with that, because it’s to their benefit,” Brière said.
The Nation will also save $37,500 or more because of the deal, since Casselman also offered reduced rates on emergency services it provides to The Nation. Brière said The Nation relies on those services, and Radio-Canada reports that Casselman would have refused to provide them if The Nation had refused the annexation.
Brière said the savings on emergency services were an incentive, but not the main factor in the decision.
‘Unacceptable’
The situation has left farmers unsure about their future.
“I’m going to have to reduce my production” if land is expropriated, said Marc-Antoine Racine, Louis Racine’s son. “I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to pay my two million [dollar] mortgage. So at this point, we’re frustrated.”
Marc Denis and his partner Micheline Mongeon worry they could lose half of their 14.6-hectare farm to a buffer zone around the treatment plant’s lagoon.
“That’s unacceptable, it would be too close to our facilities and then it would prevent us from continuing to operate with our horses,” Denis said.
Brière however claimed the area under consideration for expropriation was about two hectares.
Guy Laflèche, a spokesperson for Ferme Algépie echoed Racine’s concerns, saying Ferme Algépie could lose more than a third of its land. He insisted that there are other solutions to the treatment plant’s problem, and Denis and Mongeon, both of whom are former forestry technicians, agreed.
“There are different approaches that have been used for the lagoons in La Nation, for the municipality of Limoges where they make continuous discharges into the Castor River, which is still much smaller than the Nation River,” Laflèche said.
Brière said he hopes for an outcome that doesn’t require expropriation, but that the farmers should take up their concerns with Casselman now, as The Nation “is pretty much done” with the situation, after signing the annexation paperwork.
Casselman’s mayor, Geneviève Lajoie, declined an interview request from Radio-Canada.
