No green light for Quill Lakes drainage
Environment Minister Dustin Duncan says no project has been approved for drainage of the Quill Lakes.
A proposal put forward by the Quill Lake Watershed Association for diverting excess water from the area won’t need an environmental impact assessment, though.
What to do with extra water in the area roughly 200 kilometres north of Regina has been a muchdebated topic for years.
Three lakes — Big Quill, Little Quill and Mud Lake — are now basically one lake and some 60,000 acres of land have been swallowed up as a result.
The Quill Lake Watershed Association wants to get rid of that water and prevent further damage.
Arguably the simplest answer is to drain the water, but it gets complicated when trying to figure out where that water would go.
The proposal put forward by the watershed association is to build a 25-kilometre drainage channel that would take surface water towards Last Mountain Lake.
But people living in communities near that lake are worried what impact such a move would have on the environment.
Duncan says nothing has been approved, but an impact assessment of the plan isn’t needed because it doesn’t qualify as a development.
However, he was also quick to point out Monday that, despite no environmental assessment being required, there are still 12 conditions that must be met in order for the project to continue.
“Any potential solution is going to have people wondering what the affects are going to be,” said Duncan, who later added “we’re not going to rush a decision.”
Opposition NDP environment critic Cathy Sproule said she has “heard a lot from a lot of people” about the proposal and is concerned the province said there wasn’t enough public concern to trigger an environmental assessment.
Sproule contends “nobody knows what the plan is” and an environmental impact assessment should be done “to make sure the public has the information they need to go forward with a determination.”
This summer, Kelly Holderness of the Quill Lake Watershed Association said there is a prevailing fear that all they were seeking to do was remove dirty water from the area, but added that was not the case.
“Nobody can guarantee that there will be no damages, but what we’re saying is anything we do will minimize the damages that would happen on a natural overflow,” he said at the time.
“We’re trying to make it as best as we can, but we can’t guarantee everything.”