Water can be a boon or a bane in Manitoba, depending on whether farmers have too much or not enough.
But whether they want to drain water or use it to irrigate, a government backlog has thrown a wet blanket on hopes of moving water quickly.
Ian Wishart, who farms at Portage la Prairie, Man., irrigates some of his land, and said he has come to see water as a resource.
“I can also drain with the best of them, when I need to,” he said at the Keystone Agricultural Producers’ annual meeting.
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But the regulations for managing water are “highly fractured” and should be simplified, Wishart said.
Not only do farmers have to get permission from the provincial government, he said, but they also have to co-ordinate the work with Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration engineers, rural municipalities, local conservation districts, and soon, the federal department of fisheries and oceans.
Walter Finlay from Souris, Man., said he applied for a drainage licence 18 months ago, and has yet to hear from the provincial government.
Ray Franzman from Fannystelle, Man., said the province must spend money to fix problems with overgrown provincial drains that haven’t been maintained for years.
“With 30 inches (of rain) at Oak Bluff, you could water ski for a good part of the summer.”
Irrigation applications are also caught in the log jam.
Paul McDonald, who grows potatoes near Altona, Man., applied for an irrigation licence in 1992.
He has yet to receive one, even though the government has given his local irrigation association a letter of intent to approve the work.
Farmers irrigated 74,000 acres of land in 1999, up from 32,000 in 1988. The rapid expansion is tied to growth in potato processing, said McDonald, president of the Association of Irrigators of Manitoba.
Cut red tape
McDonald said farmers need a simpler, faster system so they can continue to expand to meet processors’ needs.
A 1999 survey showed farmers want to expand irrigation by 43,000 acres over three to five years.
Irrigation systems are expensive to build. McDonald’s farm has spent between $750,000 and $1 million on irrigation infrastructure since 1992.
But he said the investment is necessary, not just for potatoes but other high-value crops as well.
“The potential to expand into other crops … is only limited to our imagination.”
Steve Topping, director of Manitoba Conservation’s water resources branch, admitted the department has not been able to keep up with a boom in drainage and irrigation requests.
A court challenge last year stopped work on drainage application approvals for six months.
The branch has recently added five staff to its licensing section, he said, and is trying to develop alliances with local conservation districts to help speed up the approval process.
The department deals first with priorities identified by municipalities, Topping said.
So far, it has been able to process a third of 300 drainage applications from central Manitoba.
Topping said the province must ensure drainage requests are appropriate, since water is a limited resource.
He agreed that provincial drains are overgrown.
“Yes, our infrastructure is in fairly poor condition.”
But Topping said the problem didn’t happen overnight, and won’t be fixed overnight. He said he hopes the next provincial budget will allocate some extra money to drainage.
It will soon become even harder to get drainage projects approved, he added.
The federal fisheries department is adding staff in the province to monitor fish habitat.
“Undoubtedly, they’ll be interested in drains.”
In the long term, Manitoba will see its water supplies shrink and storms become more severe as the climate changes.
The next generation of farmers will have to adapt, he said, and will likely have to conserve water on farms for irrigation rather than draining it.
“This issue of global warming is overwhelming.”
