MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY – When it comes to a private, rural landowner’s plans to add an approach on their property for whatever reason, the decision is pending a safety inspection largely their own.
“Landowners and the county get to choose where they want their approaches; that’s across the board,” said Ryan Morrison, Mountain View County’s director of operations.
“Your neighbour doesn’t get to choose,” he said on Aug. 30 during a phone interview.
The Albertan was following up with Morrison to seek a response to concerns raised by a property owner who lives east of Sundre north of Highway 27 along Range Road 50.
Scott Sande said he was frustrated and caught completely by surprise to be woken up early on the morning of Saturday, Aug. 26 by the jarringly loud sounds of heavy truck traffic across the road from his property.
While Sande was glad to see drivers have an opportunity to work during challenging economic times, he was upset not only by the location of the gravel approach but especially by what he characterized as a total absence of any notifications or efforts to communicate those plans with him from any of the parties involved.
So, he decided to pack up a lawn chair with a book and proceeded to sit in the middle of the approach until about 1 p.m. when the RCMP was called out and officers asked him to vacate the premise, which he complied with.
The approach, which has since been completed, was used by local company Rick Martin Trucking, which was hauling dirt and pit run to build a nearby lease for Whitecap Resources Inc.
Such work does not require a development permit, said Morrison.
“There’s nothing in the MGA (Municipal Government Act) for it; it’s an approach,” he said. “We don’t even charge for approach permits.”
Further elaborating, he said the county has in place a master road-use agreement with Whitecap and Rick Martin Trucking.
“When (trucks) come off the site onto the road, then they’re our customer again. So, we use the master road-use agreement to regulate their trucks, any damages they may cause, things like that,” he said.
“And they are following the county’s rules as far as the haul: the route, where they’re coming from, where they’re going,” he said. “The route gets inspected; our peace officers have been out there numerous times because of the complaints.”
Such disputes are certainly not unheard of but also not exactly a regular occurrence either, he said.
“It hasn’t happened in a long, long time, where we’ve had someone get this irate about a haul,” he said. “This isn’t even a big haul either, that’s the interesting part.”
He said permission was granted only to haul from the property to the lease site and added the approach can stay as there’s nothing wrong with it.
“The county inspects the approach to make sure it’s safe,” he said.
Asked what kind of recourse for action an adjacent landowner who feels upset by the process might be able to pursue, Morrison said that as the project involved a haul for an Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) approved lease with Whitecap, that concerns should be taken up with either the oil company or the provincial government, which will likely refer complainants to the AER.
But the county essentially has no role to play regarding projects approved by the AER, he said.
“It’s above the county because the county is municipal and oil field stuff is provincial,” he said, adding county staff regularly review provincial legislation to ensure such matters are handled correctly.
“So there’s a lot of approvals. Where an oil lease goes, we don’t get any say in it. Where they put these things, they don’t involve us in those locations…the only thing that the county has anything to do with it, is the approach inspection,” he said.
There are a number of matters the province does not want municipalities getting involved in, and among them are “getting in the way of oil companies doing their work,” he said.
“I understand why they do it; it’s just so that they can keep things more streamlined and have only one body for these guys to answer to,” he said.
“But it does put us in a tough predicament with people; like you know, someone in the county has an oil lease right across their fence by their house, and they’re like, why is this rig here?”
For his part, Rick Martin told the Albertan when contacted for a response that Whitecap was only obligated to notify adjacent landowners within 500 metres of the lease, which did not encompass Sande’s property.
“There was already an existing approach there, we just widened it a bit,” added Martin.
While he’d originally considered an alternate approach from the south end of the property, that didn’t pan out.
“The reason why we went and loaded that way, is the county didn’t want us on the intersection of (Township Road) 332 and (Range Road) 50; it falls apart really bad there,” he explained.
“I addressed the county before we started hauling, and they decided that we were better to come out loaded at an old, existing approach…for the integrity of the road,” he said.
Offering additional insight, Martin said Whitecap “bought the fill land because their lease was in a slew; they needed the haul to fill in there to build the lease.”
Speaking on Aug. 30 during a phone interview, Martin said the haul, which had started just a week prior to the day, was already finished.
“The lease is built; there’ll be no more traffic from us,” he said. “The oil field will have traffic in there; the drilling rig will be moving in shortly and then they’ll be fracking it.”
As a result of some of the actions taken by Sande, Martin said police asked him if he wanted to press charges, but that he for now decided against pursuing such a path.
A call to a Whitecap representative for comment was not immediately replied to.
