Hundreds of dams divert and block prairie rivers.
Information on websites run by provincial government water agencies indicates there are 45 dams in Saskatchewan owned and operated by the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority, 200 in Alberta owned by the provincial government, along with 1,200 privately owned, and 15 hydroelectric dams in Manitoba, with more in the planning stages.
Is that enough? There is no consensus on that question.
It’s a less high profile issue than it was a few years ago, but the question of whether the Prairies in general, and Saskatchewan in particular, need more dams still generates strong opinion and debate.
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Charles (Red) Williams, professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan and a prominent commentator on agricultural issues, thinks water management through the construction of dams and reservoirs is crucial to economic development on the Prairies and in his home province.
“We have lots of water going by in our prairie rivers but it all comes by in a spring peak,” he said.
“It makes sense to me to store that water that passes in the spring and feed it out gradually during the growing season and direct water southward to supply the water deficient areas.”
Williams was part of the agricultural think-tank Agrivision, which in 2006 issued a report that proposed “drought-proofing” the Prairies by managing water in the North and South Saskatchewan rivers.
It in turn was a follow-up to a 1972 report by the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, which discussed building 24 dams on the Prairies.
Sandra Finley of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society and a former leader of the province’s Green Party, rejects the argument that dams and reservoirs will lead to increased irrigation and crop production and attract investment in the form of increased value-added processing.
She said water diversion projects are designed to put money into developers’ pockets at the expense of the environment and ordinary citizens and taxpayers.
“The proponents of these projects will never give up,” she said.
“It’s people who want to gain control of water as a commodity so they can sell it and make money.”
Finley said irrigation development is determined more by the economics of crop production than by the availability of a water source.
There are no active proposals to build major dams in the province, other than a possible hydro-electric dam on the Saskatchewan River northeast of Prince Albert, a project that has been pursued by the James Smith Cree Nation since 2001.
However, during the past decade two proposed projects received lots of public attention.
One was the Meridian dam, which was to be built on the South Saskatchewan River just inside the Alberta border.
It would have created a massive reservoir, flooding the river valley upstream to Medicine Hat.
The governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan conducted a feasibility study into the project and in 2002 agreed the cost estimates of the project outweighed potential benefits.
The other project is the Highgate dam, proposed for the North Saskatchewan River northwest of North Battleford.
The idea was first broached in the early 1970s, eventually resulting in a feasibility study that was completed and made public in the winter of 2008.
Proponents called for a series of four dams and reservoirs, starting with Highgate and continuing along the North Saskatchewan to the confluence of the North and South Saskatchewan rivers near Prince Albert, Sask.
Exactly where the Highgate proposal stands is a mystery, to its supporters and detractors.
Steve McKechnie is a retired farmer and former chair of the North Sask River water resource committee, which was set up to review the proposal and update the study done in the early 1970s.
“We updated the study and fulfilled our mandate and we’re really in a quandary now as to what we do next and how do you make anything happen out of this,” he said.
If the project is to go further, it will need some level of government to declare its support and push it forward.
“We’ve got no one standing in line and saying, ‘this is a good idea and I’m going to take this to cabinet or whatever and I’m going to push this through,’ ” he said.
The estimated cost of the Highgate dam was $126 million in 1971.
Today, it would likely be in the billions, McKechnie said.
The Highgate project has been pushed out of the public consciousness to a large degree by the debate over building a nuclear power plant in the same area, he added.
Last week, the Saskatchewan government abandoned any immediate plans for nuclear development in the region.
