Art Dias
Art Dias stands in the middle of six empty acres in his Oliver orchard on the banks of the Okanagan river.
Art Dias stands in the middle of six empty acres in his Oliver orchard on the banks of the Okanagan river. It’s hard to tell his expression, mixed as it is with part frustration part resignation, part anger, part disbelief. But it’s not hard to tell that his prime river front land should be growing food, a fact his neighbours point out to him all the time.
“Everyone asks me, Art, why aren’t you growing on that land,” says Dias. “People come up to me all the time wanting to lease it. It could be in cherries, it could be in vegetables. Bare land is a hot commodity in the Okanagan.”
But Art has a farmer’s worst nightmare. He has land but no water. Despite being next to the river and despite years of wrangling with the directors of the world-renowned Okanagan salmon restoration project, Art does not have a reliable enough water system to risk the expense of replanting his land. “They’ve stopped me from growing food for the last nine years,” he says.
It wasn’t always like that. For 45 years, Art’s family orchard has thrived. They pumped water out of the river and the Okanagan sunshine did the rest. But that all changed when the Okanagan River Restoration Initiative (ORRI) began habitat restoration work in the river right beside Art’s property in the fall of 2009.
“My family and our neighbours the Forbes family have water rights for the river for both of our farms,” explains Dias. “Gord and I have maintained the pump systems that our dads set up and we have always had enough water, but the ORRI changed the flows of the river and our pumps weren’t going to work.”
Directors of the ORRI said they would provide them with a water system. “We asked them to just move our intakes down river where the water would be deep enough for the pumps to draw,” recalls Dias. “But for some reason they didn’t want to follow our suggestion. I just wish they would have worked with us instead of ramming it down our throats.”
ORRI drilled two wells, even though Art’s dad had gone 380 feet into the clay and come up dry years ago. Then they installed a pump next to the gravel bar that was developing in the newly contoured river and buried the intake in the river bottom. “That was a nightmare,” Dias remembers. “Gord and I and our kids were in the river constantly clearing sand and gravel out the intake and cleaning the screens. When the water was up to our waist we finally quit, we were afraid we’d end up in Osoyoos!”
The two neighbours finally ripped out the buried intake and rigged up their own, but they still had problems. “We were constantly cleaning sand out of the lines,” says Dias. “I would walk my watering lines every morning before I went to work, looking for sprinkler heads that were clogged. I’d do the same when I came home at lunch and then eat a sandwich in the truck on the way back to the city public works yard. It was the same after work and I’d go out and check them with a flashlight before I went to bed.”
The sand wore out his pump and when Dias had it rebuilt the mechanic told him it looked like someone had taken a file to the inside of it.
During this time, Dias and Forbes have been to countless meetings, met with water experts, engineers and lawyers. “All those guys on the government payroll get paid to go to the meetings, and we lose money when we go, “ Dias points out.
After seven years of wrangling, the ORRI finally put in a new intake downstream in deeper water where the farmers had suggested in the first place, and built a new pumping system. But that didn’t solve Art’s water woes. The new unit has a bigger drop to water level than previous systems. It’s ok in the spring when the water level is high, but in late summer the water has to come up some 8-10 feet. “The 10 horsepower pump that they put in does not give me enough pressure to reliably cover all of my orchard land,” Dias explains.
Dias says the pump infrastructure that ORRI put in is good and he’s talked to the irrigation company about up-grading the pump. “I think I can get the system to where I need it, but I will need to test it through next summer to be sure, before I put in new trees,” says Dias. (The estimated cost for a high density cherry planting is $30,000 and acre).
So the land sits bare. Dias has missed eight growing seasons and the opportunity to access replant money. He had applied for replant funds to help with up grading his plantings that first year his water system was compromised. “I was planning to put in some of the new varieties of cherries,” he says. I applied for the funds, ripped out an old block, and put in an order for new trees. I had to cancel my application for the funds and cancel my tree order because I didn’t have the water."
He did the same again the next year hoping the water issue would be solved, but then gave up. “The nursery was really good about cancelling my order, but I was starting to get embarrassed.“
Both Dias and Forbes have approached the ORRI and the Canadian Okanagan Basin Technical Working Group (COBTWG) for compensation for business losses due to the lost opportunities they experienced from not having enough water but have not received a reply since their last letter in October 2017.
O&V wrote to Ministry of FLNRORD this last fall and received this reply. “At the March 2018 COBTWG meeting, the members decided more information was required. That information has been collected and is being reviewed.”
Dias and Forbes have recently written Lana Popham the Minister of Agriculture asking for her support.
Dias is clear that they are not against the ORRI project. “The return of salmon is such an international success story,” he notes. “We support the salmon, we just want to be compensated for our lost business.
“Come on you guys, this is Canada,” adds a frustrated Dias. “We can do better than this.”
