| May 13, 2010


Luke Drapeau was changing the oil in his truck one morning in mid-April, when he noticed a couple of Central Frontenac township employees working on his neighbour’s property.

He was going to go over to talk to them, but he hung back for a while. “I had an altercation with the roads crew last year when I found they had entered my property without my knowledge and were taking out a beaver dam,” Drapeau told the News “so I was reluctant to intervene this time.”

Drapeau did decide to go over and have a look at what was going on, but he did not get very far.

“The next thing you know there was a huge explosion and the dynamite sent mud and debris and sticks flying out from the pond. There had been no notice - the road had not been blocked off; nothing had been done.”

Drapeau said that he ran over to the township workers and asked them if there had been any notice to the landowners involved and if the men were qualified to do blasting.

“They just said their boss had told them to blast and they had done the blasting. Just then we noticed that the road was washing out.”

The water from behind the dam overwhelmed a culvert that was downstream from the property, washed out a portion of Townline Road, and then ran over Highway 7 into Black Lake.

Mike Richardson, the Central Frontenac Public Works Manager, said that it took one load of fill to repair Highway 7, and 10 to 15 loads to rebuild the Townline Road. “When we rebuilt the road we covered more than just the damage. While we were at it, we built up the road to a higher level than it had been before,” he said.

Acknowledging that the blasting had gone awry, Richardson said, “What happened there was the result of an employee who was not familiar with the location doing the work. It was our error.”

Richardson said that less than one kilogram of dynamite had been used. One kilogram is the maximum amount that can be used on beaver dams, according to a set of regulations for blasting that was developed by the Federal Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans, who have responsibility for waterways.

The protocol says that blasting should only be done as a last resort, with manual removal being a better option, and that in order to limit the effects on wildlife, dam removal should be done in small measures, to minimize the amount of water that is released at one time.

Before the blasting had taken place on Townline Road, Mike Richardson had not been aware of the situation on that road or of the decision to blast. “Crews were working on beaver dams throughout the township as a matter of course,” he said. “There are a lot of them that threaten our road system and crews work on them every year. They don't approach the landowners every year, because in most cases the landowners are happy to have the township do the work,” Richardson said.

The landowner of the parcel that contained this particular dam is Ross Manson from Toronto.

Mike Richardson confirmed that the township had not informed Mr. Manson that his dam had to go, and said that he has attempted to contact him subsequently, “but he has not returned my phone calls.”

The News contacted Ross Manson by email, and he sent the following statement:

“I haven't returned his [Mike Richardson’s] call. Getting my cooperation by trespassing and using high explosives on my land is an interesting strategy…I'm furious about this. I bought that land because of the beaver pond - it wasn't a typical beaver pond - it was a relatively deep, big, and well-established pond. In short, it's a beautiful feature. I've been planning to build a cabin overlooking the pond, and have already had a delightful talk with Ian Trickett, the township planner, about doing exactly that. So the fact that this other crew felt within their rights to walk onto my land, drain the pond, by dynamiting something that belongs to me, without my permission - well - this is troubling, to say the least. I'm very curious about the legality of all that has transpired. Have laws been broken? Have my rights been violated?”

Landowners are responsible for the impact of water on neighbouring properties and on township property, according to Mike Richardson. The township would prefer if the dams were taken care of by property owners but the township does a lot of work on private land, and while they can force landowners to pay for the work, that has not been the practice until now.

In response to this case, Richardson said that the township would be paying more attention to relations with the public, particularly landowners, before entering their land and removing dams.

“But there are quite a lot of properties where beaver dams are being left in place because there are so many absentee landlords that don’t manage them, so it will continue to be necessary to remove them,” Mike Richardson said.

Several years ago, a beaver dam burst near the Crow Lake Road to the west of the Village of Crow Lake. The rush of water destroyed a home on the road as well as a chunk of the road itself. The source of the water was a large piece of land high above the CN tracks, to the north of the Crow Lake.

“The water level on that particular property above Crow Lake Road is way up once again,” said Mike Richardson said, illustrating that while the township may need to follow new protocols in order to keep landowners in the loop, the need to take out beaver dams remains a priority.

An official from the Ministry of Natural Resources has been investigating the impact that the flooding that was caused by the Townline Road blasting has had on the watershed.

According to Luke Drapeau, the rush of water that washed out Townline road and crossed highway 7, brought with it gravel and a plume of silt, which poured into Black Lake.

Black Lake is part of the Mississippi river watershed, and drains into Sharbot Lake. Sharbot Lake Provincial Park sits on its shores. 

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