To the Editor:
The Saskatchewan Water Security Agency’s recent policy of enforcing drainage closures will destroy the profitability of farming across two million acres of farmland within the Quill Lakes Basin. This policy will only serve to further deteriorate a damaged provincial economy, cause unnecessary financial ruin among the farmers of the basin, and do nothing to alleviate the real problem — the rising of the Quill Lakes.
It is agenda-driven, with a focus on optics and perception, rather than fact-driven with a focus on a solution.
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In recent years, excessive moisture has plagued the Quill Lakes Basin. Using data from The Weather Network, since 2005 the Quill Lakes basin has received, on average, 202 inches of rain. This rainfall amount is unmatched in the recent history of the region.
By comparison, over the same period of time, the Saskatoon region has averaged only 91 inches, while the Yorkton region has averaged only 134 inches.
The Water Security Agency has opportunistically capitalized on this unprecedented weather to try to vilify farmers and their water management as the cause for the rising Quill Lakes. If drainage is the reason why the lakes are currently so high, then why, as stated in the recent KGS report (commissioned by the WSA and released Nov. 6, 2016) were they within a few inches of their current level in 1914?
For farmers, water management has allowed us to succeed through this current period of unprecedented rainfall. The KGS report shows that 92.4 percent of sloughs are less than five acres in size. On each quarter section of land there can be dozens of these. They can be so close to each other that it is often not possible to seed between them.
On a typical year, these are usually dry within one to three weeks after seeding. They are managed to allow farmers to seed earlier and avoid frost damage, or harvest before the snow.
If the Saskatchewan Water Security Agency could ruthlessly enforce the closures of drainage works, permitted and non-permitted, on all sloughs five acres or less, these potholes would hold back, according to their own research, 38.3 million cubic metres of water.
Based on the current area of the lakes, this would prevent them from rising only 1.9 inches. To put this in perspective, in the past 10 years, the lakes have risen by 248 inches.
This holding back of water would submerge 36,570 acres of productive farmland, but effectively destroy more than 100,000 acres, due to the proximity from each other and the extremely “gradual” shoreline of these potholes.
The Saskatchewan WSA refuses to acknowledge the contribution crops make to removing water from the basin. The average crop consumes 18 or more inches of water per acre during its life cycle. By growing a healthy crop in this area of 100,000 acres, 185.2 million cubic metres of water will be removed from the Quill Lakes basin, thereby preventing the Quill Lakes from rising by 9.3 inches. The crop grown removes just about five times as much water as these potholes can hold.
At an average revenue of $400 per acre, this would remove $40 million from the local economy annually, not to mention added fuel, fertilizer, chemical and labour associated with driving around these potholes. The holding of water would also increase the salinity of the surrounding soil. The farming practices necessary to manage these flooded acres would contribute to increased nutrient run-off into the watershed, increased soil erosion, and increased carbon emissions through burning, tillage and added fuel.
The ecological benefits of zero-till would likely be abandoned.
In dry years, agriculture is blamed for consuming too much water. Ironically, agriculture is now blamed in this wet cycle for contributing too much water. So which is it? Do our crops use water or not? It is difficult to fathom what the WSA hopes to accomplish by enforcing ditch closures in return for sacrificing so many family farms? One would hope that they would focus their efforts on explaining the benefits of responsible water management, rather than destroying farms only to appease a misguided public perception.
We are, and have always been, in the top five countries for food affordability. I believe this is taken for granted by those who are pushing their idealistic agenda of wetland restoration forward at the expense of agriculture in this province.
I have deep sympathy for the farmers who have lost land along the Quill Lakes, and for those who are in danger of having their farmyards flooded by water. They have been begging the Wall government for a solution for more than five years. With this perverted policy of ditch closures, the Wall government is simply deflecting the blame, and in doing so, will fail the rest of the Quill Lakes basin as well.
More worrisome is the recent introduction of changes to the water security act through the Bill 44 proposal. This legislation, designed by the WSA, for the WSA, and ignoring all concerns by farmers and commodity groups, will only serve to give the WSA a bigger “stick” to enforce the stupidity of this and other ill-conceived policies they might pursue. It will remove the appeal board of the WSA, and will allow the ministry of environment to pursue fines of up to $1 million per day against farm families with no limit.
Most of us would be bankrupt by breakfast.
I am encouraging all farmers across Saskatchewan to please contact your MLA, the ministers of environment and agriculture and the premier. Tell them you are proud of what you do. Tell them you will no longer stand by and be vilified for events you can’t control, and tell them to design policy and legislation that will continue to help agriculture drive the economy of this province. Tell them Bill 44 is a destruction of our landowners’ rights and needs to be scrapped, along with the WSA for drafting and promoting this draconian legislation.
