Irrigators forced to adapt amid water shortage

Farmers are having to make tough decisions about which crops to allocate water to, says Alex Ostrop with the Alberta Irrigation Districts Association.

The province announced Friday municipalities, irrigation districts and industry players have signed memorandums of understanding covering four sub-basins: the Red Deer River, the Bow River, the mainstem of the Oldman River and upper tributaries of the Oldman.

The deals are billed as the biggest of their kind in Alberta’s history and dwarf ones inked during the 2001 drought.

Ostrop farms near Taber and said the water allocation in his area this year is about half of what it would normally be.

“But irrigation farmers are a resilient bunch, and they’ve learned to adapt, and this is not the first time that we have faced water shortages,” he said.

Some farmers are focusing their water resources on high-value crops, like potatoes and sugar beets, as opposed to trying to boost grain yields, Ostrop added.

Randy Taylor, reeve for the County of Warner, said it’s key that everyone works together.

“The old adage that, ‘We are just a drop in the bucket so it doesn’t matter,’ doesn’t work anymore. Irrigation districts are voluntarily dropping their water, and that is food production,” said Taylor.

“So we have to be on board as municipalities to save every drop we can. Every little drop makes the big difference in the end.”

The text of the memorandums of understanding note they are not legally binding, nor do they serve as a “regulatory instrument of the Water Act” or “amend the terms of any underlying Water Act licences.”

Those are some of the reasons the agreements are “a bit of a joke,” Nigel Bankes, a professor emeritus in the University of Calgary’s law faculty, wrote on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

“And as yet I’m not seeing anything that addresses instream flows or the importance of maintaining ecological function,” he wrote.

“These non-agreements are BandAids without any glue.”

The Alberta Wilderness Association wants the province to declare a Stage 5 emergency under the Water Act, which would give it more power to restrict water use and protect ecosystems.

“Instead, it seems that the (Alberta government) is content to rely upon the goodwill of licensed users through non-binding agreements that they may enter or exit at any time,” the group said in a release.

Stage 5 is the highest on its water management scale, and the province now sits at Stage 4.

Environmental Defence said the Alberta government hasn’t addressed the root cause of the drought: humancaused climate change.

“Trying to solve a problem like a multi-year drought without discussing its cause and the factors aggravating the situation is irresponsible and ineffective,” Stephen Legault, a senior manager with the group, said in a news release.

“It would be like trying to stop a runaway car while ignoring the foot on the accelerator.”