Alberta creating working groups to tackle water shortages

Alberta Newspaper Group

The province will create a working group to discuss water shortages that currently affect 51 locations in Alberta – including Medicine Hat – and aren’t expected to get any better next year.

Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz made the statement Tuesday that the province will formally engage major water users, like municipalities and irrigators, after southern Alberta recorded some of the lowest rainfall in 2023 compared to the last 99 years on record. That’s led to extremely low storage levels along the Oldman River.

“We know it’s been an extremely dry year, but also we’re anticipating El Nino (dry weather system) next year,” said Schulz during an Edmonton press event. “If we don’t get significant amounts of snow, we’re certainly predicting that it will be another dry year next year.

“We’re working with municipalities, major water users and irrigators … to address very urgent needs as we head into next spring and the growing season, of course.”

She says results of talks might be completed early in the new year.

The ministry has said a long-term water management strategy is required, and work is advancing toward several reservoir expansions, but that capacity could still be several years away. They would also need to be filled by precipitation and river levels suffered this year when traditional runoff from mountain snowpack didn’t materialize.

According to the ministry website, the river gauge at Medicine Hat has stayed at the 40 cubic metres per second flow for most of November. Between 100 and 150 is considered normal range for this time of year. The traditional peak in late June sees levels between 200 and 800 cubic metres per second. This year the level peaked at less than 100.

City of Medicine Hat water officials reported few operational problems this summer, stating they had operated well at even lower levels in several instances over the years.

A low-flow advisory was issued for the South Saskatchewan River both upstream and downstream from Medicine Hat on Sept. 27.

At that point irrigators began refilling reservoirs ahead of freeze-up following an extremely dry year that ranked in the bottom 10 for precipitation over the past 100 years.

Restocking will leave a “relatively small deficit” in storage heading into winter on the Bow River system, according to Richard Phillips, general manager of the Bow River Irrigation District and chair of Irrigating Alberta, the umbrella group representing irrigation districts.

“The greater concern (on the Bow) is that the weather so far this fall has followed that classic ‘El Nino’ pattern, warm and dry,” said Phillips, who said the system proved resilient over the spring-to-fall time frame.

Even with little rain and very low flow “we diverted more water (in the fall) than ever before.”

This week the Eastern Irrigation system’s major reservoir, Lake Newell, was at 89 per cent of capacity. The Oldman River system however, reported one-quarter levels at the huge Oldman Dam and St. Mary reservoir sites.