OUTLOOK, Sask. – Saskatchewan’s Riverhurst district is jumping into the irrigation waters with both feet.
Lorne Jackson, chair of the local irrigation district, said members are collecting $1 an acre toward a credit program designed to help bring new irrigators on-line in south-central Saskatchewan.
“We’re trying to get our people going ahead,” he said.
The district offers a credit of $25 an acre to new irrigated operators to offset the cost of installing turnouts and risers, payable upon receipt of the irrigator’s first water bill.
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Jackson said the new operators must sign 10- to 15-year operating agreements.
Under the plan, the district’s irrigators pool their resources and look for efficiencies to keep implementation costs down. For example, farmers share costs for a backhoe to dig holes, a welder to install risers and a front-end loader to backfill.
Mechanisms and valves that might have cost a farmer $30,000 now cost $10,000, said Jackson, who noted one turnout now handles three pivots.
“We’re doubling up so a person will pay one-quarter of the cost.”
He said his board is interested in expanding existing irrigation district projects that the Saskatchewan government created in the 1980s and 1990s. He believes irrigators should pay for the expansion.
“Do not hold your breath for government programs.”
Gordon Kent, the district’s vice-chair, said increased numbers of irrigators in the district will bring down fees irrigators pay to maintain and repair existing infrastructure.
Irrigators pay as much as $14 an acre per year toward this fund.
Since implementing the credit program, the district has been able to increase irrigated acres in four years by 3,000 acres to an anticipated 10,000 in 2004. The original project envisioned at least 22,000 acres suitable for irrigation but Kent said development stalled and was only partially completed.
He said most projects have been relatively easy and inexpensive to bring on-line to date, but will require more money as more pipes and pumps add to the cost.
That means borrowing money over a longer term, something Kent said is thwarted by the irrigators’ lack of equity in their irrigation equipment, which the government owns.
“If they expect us to do the infill on the projects ourselves, they better be prepared to give us the projects as equity,” he said, citing examples of irrigators in other provinces who own their own projects.
