[The Alberta Environmental Policy Series highlights the many environmental challenges and related government policies in Alberta. SAGE welcomes feedback on these topics.]
The Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) entered an agreement in 2021 with the Government of Alberta and Irrigating Alberta, Inc. for improving irrigation infrastructure and increasing water storage. The CIB loan amounts to $466 million with a grant from the Government of Alberta amounting to $244.5 million and a contribution of $163 million from the ten irrigation districts involved.
This funding was provided without adequate consultation or an assessment of cumulative effects related to substantial additions of water storage and the conversion of nearly 200,000 acres of land to irrigation, including native grassland. There is no apparent oversight by the CIB to ensure that environmental standards are met, leaving this evaluation (or not) to the proponent of the funding.
A consortium of environmental interests, including SAGE, requested more information through the FOIP process to better understand the terms of the agreement and the commitment to maintaining the health of the rivers and the preservation of native grassland habitat for species-at-risk. Three years later a heavily redacted document was provided by the Government of Alberta. During this period, there have been nine proposals for new or expanded reservoirs designed for expanding irrigation acres and, possibly, provide for water security during periods of drought [see summary chart below].
Unfortunately, the decision-making process for expanding irrigated acres and water storage ignores the protection of native grassland in the region. Native grassland not only provides significant ecosystem services (water retention, water quality, air quality, erosion control and carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change, etc.) but represents an already diminished habitat for bio-diverse species including many species-at-risk.
Converting native grasslands to irrigated agriculture represents permanent environmental loss. In evaluating such a loss, one would expect some consideration relating to the purpose of expanding agricultural output (i.e., the social benefits of the crops grown), the health of rivers and riparian areas, and an acknowledgement of the costs of continuing to ignore our commitments to achieving greenhouse gas emission targets. An economy is only as strong as the ability of the natural world to sustain its exploitation.
Furthermore, and perhaps most alarmingly, these projects are based on incomplete, outdated and flawed water modelling. Water modelling that is employed to justify these projects involve methodologies that are designed to achieve certain objectives – typically, objectives influenced by industry interests. They tend to ignore the future impacts of diminishing glaciers that supply late-summer flow, the impacts of intensified logging practices, and the projected impacts of climate change on water flowrates and timing. And they tend to ignore the realities of flow regimes that are necessary for the health of aquatic ecosystems. Existing water reservoirs already have difficulty maintaining storage capacities as a result of climate change and industrial impacts on the natural function of environmental systems in the eastern slopes, including the destruction of wetlands and headwater forests.
Cumulative effects of the projects on rivers and grasslands are not being assessed, but they should be. Total proposed expansion of irrigated acres associated with these projects is 201,727 ha (~500,000 ac), a 30% increase from irrigated acres in southern Alberta in 2020. More than 8,000 ha of valley habitat would be flooded, approximately a 15% increase in total reservoir surface area in southern Alberta leading to Increased loss of water to evaporation (~70 cm/year). Storage in the basin would be increased by approximately 1,900 million cubic metres, equivalent to 20% of the total mean natural annual flow within the Red Deer, Bow, Oldman and South Saskatchewan rivers in Alberta. Average summer flow in the South Saskatchewan River at Medicine Hat has declined 33% since 1912 whereas calculated natural flow has not changed significantly. The decline is due to large withdrawal for irrigation.
Important policy initiatives would include the protection of extant native grasslands from irrigation expansion and meeting water conservation objectives (WCO) for instream flows established in the approved South Saskatchewan River Basin Water Management Plan (2006).
There are natural limits. Limits, that when exceeded, threaten environmental systems and future economic activities that rely on them. Have we arrived at such a limit in southern Alberta?
