Weyburn has long had the reputation for being a leader in the province and in Canada in certain areas, such as with the carbon dioxide miscible flood project in the Weyburn Field, or with Weyburn’s status as the biggest grain-gathering point in Canada, as two examples.
In the area of the environment, Weyburn is home to HELP International, which has been developing environmental practices for growing trees for shelterbelts or along river banks, or to help bring health back to land with salinity or other problems.
Now, HELP has run into a problem, namely that their lease on the city farm on the city’s northwest corner ran out on Oct. 31. Executive director Rodney Sidloski asked for an extension of five years, to enable them to find an alternate bigger location to move to, but city council rejected the request, saying they are going to stick to the signed agreement.
Sidloski has tried to argue that they were verbally promised the farm land as a permanent home as long as no changes to their purpose or use of the land were made — but Mayor Debra Button said anything other than the signed agreement is “hearsay”, to use a legal term.
HELP has indicated they don’t have anywhere else to go right now, if they have to clear out right now.
On the one hand, it can be pointed out that HELP knew a decade ago that this deadline will come up, so realistically, they should’ve been planning for this deadline which would inevitably arrive. Even a year or two ago, there could have been some arrangements made where their operations could move to.
More recently, HELP has been harvesting trees from the former PFRA tree nursery at Indian Head, but this location is not available to them to move to, as the ownership of the land is still being decided with a number of First Nations looking at possibly taking it over, or at least, being given the right of first refusal. It could literally be years before the ownership of that parcel of land is decided on.
The stance the city takes certainly should be upheld, but realistically, they could make an allowance, and compromise on the five-year request, say reducing it to one or two years.
HELP is a valuable resource and they bring in agricultural students from such countries as Malaysia and Kenya; they are worth helping out, so perhaps there could be a way to meet them half-way.
