Weldon Ferry opens after delaying farmers for a month

“It’s two miles for me, on the road usually, and this was over 60 miles so, it’s a big difference,” he said. “Usually with the tractor I can be there in 15 minutes … Now it’s, like with the tractor it’s just about four hours, and plus the roads are really terrible.”

The detour lengthens his day dramatically, Reusser said, and this is putting him behind with seeding.

“Usually I can be half done in the field and now just to get there it takes that long,” he said.

Reusser said he wishes he would have known the ferry opening would be delayed, so he could have made the decision to start seeding his crops earlier.

“It’s frustrating,” he said. “Usually I’m done seeding [by this time] and I just started yesterday. We don’t know how the year is going to turn out … might not make it this year.”

The ferry opening has had some delays in the past, but it’s usually in by the first week of May, according to Reusser. Some years it has been in as early as the end of April, he said. Now, he’s starting to consider that is a thing of the past.

“It’s just been too frustrating. Like, I’m thinking about renting it out and quitting [farming] over there. You just can’t rely on [the ferry],” he said.

According to Reusser, one of the worst parts about the situation is no one was willing to take responsibility when he called them.

“They just said, ‘the ferry isn’t ready’ and they blamed the contractor,” said Reusser. “Nobody seems to be accountable for it.”

As a mechanic, the situation has also affected him. He buys a lot of his parts in Kinistino, and to get there he’d also have to drive around. Many of his customers are on the other side of the river.

“I’ve lost some customers because it’s just too far to go,” he said.

He added he “doesn’t have much hope,” but still wants the situation to be straightened out.

Doug Wakabayashi, from the ministry of highways and infrastructure, said part of the delay was because they were doing major repairs to the hull of the ferry to “extend its service life and to make sure it operates safely.”

At that point, the ministry decided to do some additional repairs, which he said they completed a couple of weeks ago. They also did repairs to the main cable.

“We do our best to do this kind of work in the off season, so we’re not impacting traffic, but again a combination of the additional work that we took on and also high water levels on the river, it was unavoidable unfortunately,” he said.

The high waters levels were the second major factor this year and it sounds like they will continue to effect ferry use.

According to Wakabayashi, most of the ferries in Saskatchewan run on a cable system, and he said they run into problems when water levels are high.
“If the water level on the river is too high or too low that puts too much stress on the cable,” he said.

That’s when weight restrictions have to come into play.

A weight restriction has been set to “light loads” on the Weldon Ferry, which Wakabayashi said means up to 4000 kilograms. An example of this would be two regular sized passenger vehicles.

This means some equipment might be turned away, and some farmers like Reusser might have to continue to use a much longer route to get to their fields.

asoloducha@rawlco.com

On Twitter: @alex_soloducha

by Alex Soloducha

Weldon Ferry opens after delaying farmers for a month

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