FOAM LAKE, Sask. – Farmers and landowners in low-lying areas around Foam Lake are bracing for another battle in their fight against spring flooding.
Last year, the Foam Lake area, including Fishing Lake, received roughly 1,000 millimetres of rain between April 1 and freeze-up.
Record precipitation created waterlogged fields, overflowing wetlands and shallow inland lakes in spots that normally grow grain and oilseeds.
The area received a lot of snow this winter and the spring melt is already two weeks to a month late, according to local grain buyer Graham Smith, who manages the North East Terminal at nearby Wadena, Sask.
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Spring runoff, when it finally begins to flow, could deal another crippling blow to the area’s farmers, who last year seeded about 20 to 25 percent of their normal acreage.
“It’s not going to be pretty,” said Smith.
“It’s absolutely critical that we start getting some warm weather here.”
“It’s already looking like we’re as much as a month behind and the next two weeks are calling for cooler temperatures compared to normal,” Smith said March 25.
“We’re going to have a lot of water to move out.”
According to Smith, volumes of grain moving through the terminal will almost certainly be well below normal in 2011.
Larry Altman, a municipal councillor with the Rural Municipality of Foam Lake, agreed that agricultural losses will be significant this year.
Last week, Altman was fortifying berms along the southwestern shore of Fishing Lake, a resort about 20 kilometres north of the town of Foam Lake.
In 2007, spring water levels rose until the lake expanded outward, swallowing up beaches, breaching roads and flooding dozens of cabins along with surrounding farmland.
Berms constructed around Fishing Lake during the flood of 2007 are being raised by as much as 60 centimetres this year, to a height of 531.6 metres above sea level.
The Saskatchewan Watershed Authority predicts water levels will peak at about 531 metres this spring.
The community is better prepared this spring than it was in 2007, but for farmers the outlook is beginning to look grim, Altman said.
“Depending on how the snow disappears this spring, it’s probably going to be worse than last year.”
Altman said grain and oilseed farmers around Foam Lake harvested about 15 percent of seeded acres.
Livestock producers were also hit hard. Pastures were flooded, hay production was poor and corrals were waterlogged or underwater for much of the year.
About 30 kilometres north of Foam Lake, at Kuroki, Sask., farmers and landowners are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst, said Borden Woloshyn, a farmer and reeve for the Rural Municipality of Sasman, which borders Fishing Lake to the north.
“Sloughs are full, ditches are full so any runoff that’s going to occur because of the snow pack melt this year is going to be excess water…. It’s definite, we’re going to be in a flooding situation this year. There’s no question.”
At Fishing Lake, which receives runoff from roughly half of the RM of Sasman, the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority is constructing a drainage channel to release excess water from Fishing Lake into the Upper Assiniboia watershed via the Whitesand Creek system.
Construction is nearing completion, but control gates will not be opened if drainage has the potential to contribute to flooding losses downstream in the lower Assiniboia River in southern Manitoba.
