‘Poor, poor planning and timing’: Road closure concerns farmers in RM of Macdonald

Some farmers south of Winnipeg say an upcoming road closure is going to prevent them from getting their grain to market. CTV’s Harrison Shin reports.

Farmers in the RM of Macdonald are pushing for the delay of a road closure to secure critical time during the harvest period.

Dustin Wiens, a farmer in the municipality adjacent to Winnipeg, noticed heavy construction equipment showing up on the floodway dike near his farm last week. He said the nearby road is one of the main arteries to haul grain in and out of his family’s farm.

Wiens inquired with the province for more information and learned that the equipment was to replace a collapsed culvert. The project will close Floodway Road along the dike next week, according to a provincial spokesperson, though nearby Glenlea Road will remain open.

“It’s really wet around here. So all the side roads that we want to use are soft. The only hard-packed, accessible road here is this floodway dike, which they want to close here on Monday,” Wiens said.

“We don’t have highways until five miles out—the (highway) 75 or the 330. And by closing this vital artery, we don’t have a side road that we can just bypass with a heavy truck like this.”

Wiens said the next two to three weeks are critical to local farmers during harvesting time.

“I have 80 loads of grain coming here in the next two to three weeks, and this will add another 15 to 20 minutes to each load,” he said.

Wiens added that the additional time can be costly.

“That’s a slower harvest. If rain comes and it gets rained on, it degrades the grain. It’ll now go from a number one wheat to a feed wheat—which, in the end, could cost me 50 to 100, if not more than $100,000 in poor quality,” he explained.

A fellow farmer, Tyler Bartmanovich, said the collapsed culvert has been known for a while.

“The province has known about this collapsed culvert for about four to five years now … this year they got some funding for it, so they decided, ‘We’ll fix the culvert,’” Bartmanovich said.

“Well, they picked the worst time of year to address that issue, because harvest is the busiest time of year for farmers pulling in all their grain. They have to either bring it back to their farmyard or they got to take it to an elevator.”

Bartmanovich added more could have been done, and the notice was too short.

“The province should have consulted with local area, farmers and businesses about when to close and address this culvert issue. And, when they do decide to close it, they should give you a lot more notice than one week,” Bartmanovich said.

“They should be giving you two months’ notice or something, because people don’t always plan their route and check to see which gravel roads are open.”

A provincial spokesperson told CTV News that Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure (MTI) has engaged a contractor to install a culvert through the dike near Glenlea Road and Floodway Road.

“The department has been in communication with the Rural Municipality of Macdonald and industry during the planning and preparation in the early stage of this project,” the statement read in part.

“Scheduling of the final construction was based on a number of factors that included project approvals, the required construction timing and minimizing impacts for local traffic and industry as much as possible.”

The statement said that MTI will work with the contractor to minimize the duration of the road closure and anticipates that the work will be completed in approximately eight weeks, weather permitting.