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DORIN LAND AND OILFIELD MANAGEMENT INC.
9760 60 Ave, Edmonton
Alberta, Canada T6E 0C5
Telephone (780) 430-0840
Fax (780) 430-0367
[email protected]
April 14, 2015
Mr. Wade Bearchell
PC Party Candidate
Olds / Didsbury
VIA E-MAIL
Dear Sir:
Re:
Surface Rights Issues in Your Riding
Our firm has its roots in Didsbury. We note you are in the local golf business. Our family land
was sold in 2008 to a developer who planned to build two Gary Player world class golf courses.
The sale did not occur, in part because of one of the most scandalous takings of surface rights in
Alberta, on the very land granted by Queen Victoria to the founder of Didsbury.
Land agents, many who contribute significantly to the injustices I write about, are trained at Olds
College. Ethics training is a part of the curriculum. The assumed effectiveness of ethics training
is a critical assumption in the overall statutory scheme, which needs to be examined.
An oil company managed to illegally gain a right of entry to the surface of our Didsbury land,
and to do so cheaply, by way of employing unethical land agents. Had I not forced the former
ERCB to cause the operator to re-abandon the well next to the Bethany seniors facility in
Didsbury, the seniors housed there would have lived next to an unsafe oil well indefinitely.
What the irresponsible oil company did in the town of Didsbury, was illegally vent large
quantities of natural gas to atmosphere – a highly unsafe activity. Only luck prevented a massive
explosion. The same occurred at no less than 18 other wells in the Olds / Didsbury area. The
surface rights issues Premier Prentice spoke of yesterday in Three Hills, while concerning, are
nothing compared to the far more serious issues of illegal entries in the riding you are running in.
The Didsbury landowners, my family, did not receive what virtually all other landowners in the
Province receive – annual compensation for the surface taking (an expropriation by the Surface
Rights Board, involving alarming facts, errors of law, jurisdiction, and unfair process).
The irresponsible operator is busy trying to have all annual compensation payments put to an
end, and to pass responsibility for land contamination to the surface owners. The electorate
owning surface rights throughout the province have a right to know the entirety of what is at
stake in your riding as I write this, and what your party’s intentions are.
Since you are a candidate of the incumbent government, which created the new Alberta Energy
Regulator, and which undertook to amend the Surface Rights Act but has yet to do so, we feel it
is your responsibility to raise these issues with your party leader, to address the problems during
the campaign in a meaningful way, and to debate the matters in any event.
RESIDENTAL AND OIL AND GAS DEVELOPMENT CAN CO-EXIST