Al Barber

“They push snow onto my property,” said Brochu. “They don’t push it away like they should. I have tried calling to have them send someone to clean up their mess but they don’t do anything, they don’t carry it away.”
According to Brochu, the ploughs turn around near his house on route 147 and when they do they push remaining snow and sand just out of the Eaton Corner area into Waterville and specifically onto his land. When spring comes and the snow melts, Brochu is left with a damaged lawn.
“Every spring I ask them to clean up their mess,” he said. “It burns the grass so it dies and nothing will grow there, it makes big messes.”
Brochu, who has lived there for 30 years, says the unwelcome deposit has been a regular occurrence over the last five years. On Tuesday he returned home to find the snow pushed even further onto his land and the largest snow bank to date.
“They pushed it 45 feet from the centre line onto my property,” said a frustrated Brochu. “There is now a big snow bank, must be 50 foot long by 10 foot high, sitting on my land.”
Complicating the situation is that the municipal ploughs are not from Waterville but Brochu is. He has had little luck getting anyone in the Cookshire-Eaton municipality to respond to the problem.
“At the beginning when they made a mess I called Waterville (municipality) because I live here and pay taxes and they told me that it wasn’t their area so I would have to call the Eaton corner municipality,” said Brochu. “I’ve called them and left messages and no one has ever called me back.”
“I haven’t heard about it,” said Kimball Smith, Director General and Emergency Coordinator of Waterville. “If he is a resident of Waterville then we would look into the situation.”
Although The Record placed calls to the Cookshire-Eaton municipal office no one was available for comment.

By Corrinna Pole
Sherbrooke

2009-02-25