Red Deer’s mayor says he supports a plan that would use flood water from the Red Deer River to boost water supplies in drought-prone areas of Stettler and Paintearth Counties.
Earlier this month, provincial officials announced that an environmental impact assessment has been started on revisions to the Special Areas Water Project, which would divert water from the river to fill needs for household and livestock use in East Central Alberta.
Red Deer Mayor Morris Flewwelling said that while Red Deer and other members of the Red Deer River Municipal User Group were concerned with some aspects of original proposal, its current version looks like something he can accept.
One of the biggest problems with the original plan for the project was that it would have used water from the Red Deer River to irrigate fields in the target region, said Flewwelling.
Under the proposal now being studied, irrigation would be reduced significantly and used only as a means of flow control, Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Jack Hayden said earlier this week.
There were two parts to the earlier proposal, said Flewwelling. The first was to provide reservoirs that would hold water for livestock and recreation.
“The other part was a scheme to irrigate some land out in that area, and Red Deer is happy to see that dropped. We were very concerned that water would be taken from the Red Deer River and used for irrigation when, really, that likely wasn’t the highest and best use of the water, even though it would make higher and better use of the land out there,” he said.
“Given that the Red Deer is the cleanest and smallest and least allocated river of the South Saskatchewan River basin, we don’t want to jeopardize it.”
Keith Ryder, CEO of Municipal User Group, said on Wednesday that he has not yet reviewed the most recent proposal for the project.
The project has been through a number of revisions and is still in the proposal process, said Ryder.
“Each time the diversion is less and less (so) I think it is becoming more palatable to all of the players along the Red Deer River,” he said.
“The main fact is that the Red Deer River is the only river within the South Saskatchewan River basin that still has allocations available, so I think that all of us want to make sure that the remaining allocations are only given out with the utmost of due diligence, and that’s what our group is looking at.”
Data posted on the Red Deer River Municipal User Group web page states that just over half of the available allocations for water from the Red Deer River had been assigned as of June 2009.
To meet with Alberta’s flow agreement with Saskatchewan for the South Saskatchewan River Basin, allocation limits for the Red Deer River have been set at 550,000 cubic decametres per year (a cubic decametre is equal to 1,000 cubic metres). As of June 17, 2009, the river’s 12,521 licensed users, including the City of Red Deer, were entitled to a total of 306,498 cubic decametres per year.
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com