I discovered one obvious reality when I moved to Manitoba in 2001: water is a big, big issue here.
And it’s often news.
Farm news. Agriculture news. Winnipeg news. Indigenous news. Environmental news.
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Whether it’s floods, droughts, water pollution, drainage, wetlands, sewage plant costs or Canada-U.S. river crossings, water issues are often the most important in the province.
It’s certainly true for farmers, who are often both upstream and downstream in watersheds and subject to the back-and-forth water politics that sets Manitoban neighbours, communities and industries against each other, as well as being stitched into the interprovincial and international complexities of rivers, floods, nutrient flows, waterborne weeds and migrating waterfowl.
Here water matters, and everybody knows it.
That’s why it entirely makes sense to base the new Canada Water Agency here in Winnipeg. Regardless of Manitoba being at the geographic centre of Canada, water issues are more intense here than even along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence or on the west coast.
For more on the agency and what some Manitoba agricultural interests think about it, see this story. https://www.producer.com/news/canada-water-agency-to-be-located-in-winnipeg/
It’s a very late spring again this year. There is much snow to melt. Usually by this time of the year I’d be out there covering flooded cropland along the Red River valley, talking about flood forecasts, watching the water levels along the Assiniboine and getting ready for anxiety and upset if the Portage diversion had to be employed and throw ranchers into peril.
This year it’s been cold so those stories have yet to decide if they want to be told, or remain untold and give farmers a break.
As I wrote about in this column, https://www.producer.com/markets/take-comfort-in-the-good-news-that-gets-little-attention/ often having no news is good news for society, so I hope this year to have nothing to report on when it comes to floods, droughts and other water problems.
But I was very happy to be able to report on the new Canada Water Agency coming to Manitoba. It deserves to be here and it deserves to be noticed.
Contact ed.white@producer.com
