Letters to the editor - October 3, 2024

Irrigation expansion fiscally irresponsible

I read with interest the article titled “Irrigators say Sask. expansion plan is necessary” in the Sept. 12 edition of the Western Producer.

Aaron Gray, co-chair of Irrigation Saskatchewan, said he is frustrated by opposition to the project from those who say it will only benefit a few farmers. His comments are about the proposed multibillion-dollar expansion of irrigation at Lake Diefenbaker.

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He is correct in saying, “we know it is feasible.” With unlimited billions of taxpayer dollars, most things are feasible. But are they fiscally responsible?

Mr. Gray claims he can irrigate and make money, compared to losing money on dryland crops. How is it, then, that tens of thousands of dryland farmers are able to make money without irrigation?

Mr. Gray asks, how am I going to afford to put in irrigation? His response is, how can I afford not to put in irrigation? If irrigation is so affordable, why then haven’t these few farmers developed this project themselves? Mr. Gray’s pipe dream is only feasible with billions of public dollars.

With overcrowded schools, hospital closures and long wait times for surgery, homeless people and soup kitchens, along with a mounting provincial debt of some $30 billion, people are correct in opposing a questionable exorbitant project that may only benefit a few farmers.

Lorne Scott
Indian Head, Sask.

Unchecked drainage an environmental threat

I would like to thank the Western Producer and Karen Briere for publishing a story (“Landowners struggle with unapproved drainage”, Sept. 19, 2024) detailing the experience of farmers like Lane Mountney and Wade Porter as the Saskatchewan Water Security Agency allows neighbours to dump farm effluent water onto their land.

As the article notes, this is happening all over the Prairie region of the province. But there are far more farmers like Mountney and Porter — as well as many rural people who are saddened and frustrated by the massive drainage projects happening in their neighbourhoods — than there are the big drainers.

Unfortunately, the drainers often have the largest farm operations and because of the money they have invested in land and equipment, they have the greatest incentive to clear their land of natural cover, including wetlands. And they are vocal and organized in lobbying for government support and funding to remove as much water as possible from their fields.

As larger operators with staff, they have the resources and time to spend on political lobbying organizations like the Farm Stewardship Association and, more recently, the Saskatchewan Drainage Extension Network. These organizations have one purpose: to make it easier for the few farmers they represent to get water off their land as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, thousands of rural people suffer in silence, not wanting to anger the big operators in their municipality. They have heard the stories about others being threatened.

In dry years, they watch the water table drop lower than it should be and crops wither in an environment stripped of wetlands, shelterbelts and aspen bluffs. In wet years, the drainage ditches deliver too much water too fast to places where it shouldn’t be, washing out roads and gullying coulees to get to creeks that cannot handle the volume.

And through it all, there is the grief that comes with seeing the landscape de-natured of the natural beauty that they grew up with, that once made life in the country good.

Rural people concerned about drainage need to find their voice and work with one another to stop the onslaught on wetlands and other natural cover in farm country. The long-term public good, and the human right to a healthy landscape, is on your side.

We seem to have forgotten that wildlife and wetlands do not belong to any one person. They are not obstacles for private landowners to “manage” as they see fit. They are our common heritage as prairie people, as citizens who are to share the benefits from and responsibility for the lands and waterways bound by treaties and Canadian law.

If we leave our decisions about the quality of the farm environment to SK DEN’s carefully selected “strategic advisers and industry leaders” and definition of “environmental stewardship,” Saskatchewan will lose the ecological integrity and beauty that has nurtured the prairie and its people since the glaciers retreated north 10,000 years ago.

Trevor Herriot,
Regina