There isn’t enough water for everyone in the South

Editor:

A month or so ago, I just finished reading a book, “The Oldman River Dam Building a future for southern Alberta.”

Ken Kowalsky, Alberta’s previous Public Works minister said at the time of the dam’s completion “that all our water problems will be solved now with the completion of this dam.”

I would like to ask all of the many hardworking irrigation farmers in the South if they would agree with his statement.

We do have a water management system in place. How effective is it?

Since the Oldman Dam was completed, I think that there has been way too much allocation of irrigation water rights to farms in the South. This is just my personal opinion.

Let’s bring in industries like Lamb Weston, McCain Foods and Cavendish Farms Ltd, to take care of the expansion of the potato industry.

The plants themselves use a lot of water as do the farmers that pay their water rights to grow the potatoes.

Expanded irrigated acres have meant an increase in many specialty crops. These crops help feed the world. That’s a good thing.

The law of supply and demand has to be taken into consideration when irrigating is concerned. Farmers demand, or ask, for more irrigation rights to, as an example, raise potatoes.

I believe potatoes have to be rotated every three or for years.

The big corporate farms keep getting bigger. They have to be bigger to accommodate the crop rotations of the specialty crops.

You make very good money on irrigated farmlands. You also spend a lot of money for expenses. Farmers buy more land, to make more money. These farmers also require more water to irrigate those crops.

Now we are in a serious drought situation. We have been for the last couple of years. It does not look like it will get any better.

Because many farmers bought more land to raise more specialty crops and other crops to justify their expenses, there is simply not enough water to go around for everyone.

Who is responsible for overallocating the water licences in southern Alberta?

Someone in the know should have predicted a scenario where there would not be enough water for everyone to irrigate their crops.

Right now, the government and St. Mary’s Irrigation District is expanding the capacity of Chin Reservoir but you don’t even have enough water to fill it and other existing reservoirs.

Guarantee a continuous supply of fresh water to the South and then expand irrigatable acres. This would make more sense, wouldn’t it?

I propose that in order to solve the long-term water shortage in the South that we look at interbasin water transfer from some of the bigger rivers up north.

Is this possible? Would it make economic sense?

Get the engineers and university academics to see if this would or could be even possible. Possibly

generate hydro power at the same time that the water would be brought down south.

Build many reservoirs to store the water in winter so as when the growing season comes, there will be plenty of water for everyone.

This would be a huge undertaking but if done right it could even guarantee the expansion of irrigatable acres further.

More water could be accessed to even irrigate land further north of the existing irrigation in the South.

This expanded acreage would grown the much-needed food for the world. Rob Stanko

Lethbridge