A Barrhead county resident wants people to think twice before they decide to float down the Pembina River.
On any given weekend dozens of people from Barrhead and surrounding communities make their way down Hwy. 33, about a 10 minute drive out of town, to the Pembina River to escape the summer heat by leisurely floating down the river.
The problem, Stan Dezaeyer said, is many of them don’t think ahead to what happens when it’s time to get off the river.
“It’s a great beach down there and I too know why people might want to float or tube on the river, but if they do they have to think ahead about where they are going to get off the river and how you are going back to your vehicle,” he said.
Nor are people giving any thought to the rights of the property owner which they may be trespassing on to get back to their original site.
Dezaeyer gives a recent example from his own property. Last week he was touring his property, inspecting his wheat crop, when he noticed an unusual pattern.
Every few feet, a portion of wheat was crushed flat.
“It is really noticeable, especially since the wheat stands close to hip high,” he said, adding that the pattern started close to the river.
Eventually the intermittent pattern of tall grain, followed by patches of trampled flat crop became a continuous path, one Dezaeyer followed to the end point near the bridge that goes over the Pembina River on Hwy. 33.
At first he thought the path was made by people on an ATV or quad-type of vehicle, but he soon changed his mind.
“It was packed down too tight to be from a quad. What I believe happened is that a couple of people were floating on the river and they realized they would have trouble getting off the river because the bank of the river gets quite a bit higher,” he said, adding at first the pair or group decided to try to carry their floatation device, but because of its weight, they occasionally set it down, crushing Dezaeyer’s crop.
“Eventually they decided their beer and all the other supplies they were carrying was too heavy and they decided to just drag it the rest of the way.”
Dezaeyer believes the group were carrying beer because he saw empty beer cans on the path near the bridge.
Besides damaging his crop, Dezaeyer believes people who camp, tube or use the sandbar at the Pembina River near the bridge, are putting people at risk.
“It’s an accident waiting to happen,” he said. “Someone is going to get killed there when they come back on the highway. I’ve seen some scary, scary stuff there.”
The other issue Dezaeyer is concerned about is the lack of respect people have for people’s private property.
“I think that is what bothers me most is lack of respect. They got themselves into a situation that I had nothing to do with, and they don’t care about the landowner,” he said adding the culprits walked about half a mile through his crop.
Dazaeyer is also hoping to find out the identity of who, as he puts it, ‘inspected his crop.”
“I am not sure what will come of it, I’m not sure but maybe it will make other people think about what they’re doing before floating down the river,” he said.
