A municipality in Western Manitoba is worried about long term conservation agreements and the impact those deals could have on water management projects.

Councillors with the RM of Sifton feel the length of the conservation deals could pose a real problem.

“We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of acres of land under those types of agreements and it can just be hayed and pastured type thing. As time goes on some of this land has to be rejuvenated and worked up and sowed down to either grass or alfalfa and then its alright for awhile then” said Reeve Cyril Druwe.

Councils big concern is the time frame with these deals. “Is in perpetuity and that means forever. I think if it was like for 20 or 30 years council would be a lot happier. And its not just council because we are getting a lot of feedback from our ratepayers.”

Druwe says in some cases money was tight because of BSE and some of those years and it was easy cash for land owners to enter into the long term deals. “Now maybe people want to work up their land and they probably can’t do it.”

Getting out of any deal could be a costly process according to Druwe. A number of the deals are with groups like DU, Manitoba Habitat and the Nature Conservancy.

“We have formulated a plan on how to tackle this issue but maybe a group of RM’s should get together and make some noise about this issue to see if there could be some changes. The big change would be limiting the length of time on the deals.”