CALGARY – Life in the Western Irrigation District on the outskirts of Calgary can be like living next to an elephant that dumps more than its share of waste on its neighbor.
Through this region, Calgary’s storm drainage, carrying animal feces, phosphorus, salts and dirt from the city sweeps along 29 pipes eventually landing in the district’s main canal.
The district is obligated to provide water supplies from the Bow River to 400 farmers, 400 acreage dwellers and the towns of Strathmore, Gleichen, Standard and Rockyford.
It is the only irrigation district in Alberta located just east of a city of 780,000 people, few of whom realize the district even exists.
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And with recent concerns the 90-year-old system may not be able to cope with the flow much longer without repairs, Brent Apesland, manager of the Western Irrigation District, said the district is looking to Calgary for help.
The district argues the city and provincial government must bear some of the costs and responsibilities for keeping the water quality high and guaranteeing supply.
“If you have that kind of benefit coming to the city from having the irrigation district next door, some of that money should come back into the system to maintain it,” said Apesland.
Guidelines exceeded
About 95 percent of the samples drawn from the canals don’t meet provincial and federal water quality standards for irrigation or recreation and the district wants Calgary to build more settlement ponds to filter the water, said Apesland.
Stan Klassen, head of the Alberta Irrigation Projects Association, said the Western Irrigation District’s problems with urban encroachment are unique among the 13 districts in the province. He said Calgary may eventually have to invest in the irrigation district since there are advantages to having it there.
There are problems with the flow capacity as well. The canal system is designed to handle 1,600 cubic feet per second and some people are concerned a heavy storm could flush as much as 3,000 cubic feet per second downstream and overflow the district’s canal banks with water that has not passed through the city’s sewage treatment plants.
On top of that, about 65 kilometres of main canals need repairs. Water is seeping out of the canals, banks are crumbling and overgrown with weeds.
Rehabilitation began last year with the planting of fast-growing trees along banks to prevent erosion. Banks are being resloped and canals relined. Costs are split between the province and district with the former bearing 75 percent of the expenses.
It costs as much as $300,000 per kilometre for repairs and to save money, the district is switching some low level watering systems to pressurized pipelines.
“We’ve tried to take a system that was about 1,600 kilometres in length and reduce it to about 1,000,” said Apesland.
As the role of the district changes to become more like a utility expected to provide water at the lowest possible cost to all users, district officials say they need more water than what the province allows.
That has breathed new life into a long-standing disagreement over the amount the district is licensed to use. The dispute centres around the original 1921 licence issued by the federal government. In 1930 Ottawa transferred responsibility for water to the provinces and said they had to honor all previous agreements.
“We believe that we still run under a 1921 licence and that licence allows us to divert 2,068 cubic feet per second,” Apesland said. In 1963 the province reduced that to 400 cubic feet per second, which the district said was done without discussion.
Negotiations between the province and irrigation district are expected to continue for some time.
