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Plan to divert river water alarms former city councillor

Members of the public must take part in discussions of a water diversion project proposed for the Red Deer River, says a former Red Deer city councillor.

Members of the public must take part in discussions of a water diversion project proposed for the Red Deer River, says a former Red Deer city councillor.

Business owner Lorna Watkinson-Zimmer, who did not run in the 2010 municipal elections, had been the city’s representative on the Red Deer River Municipal Users Group, an organization of municipalities that fall within the river’s watershed.

Last month, Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Jack Hayden, MLA for Drumheller-Stettler, announced that an environmental impact assessment is underway on a proposal that would pipe flood waters in the spring from the Red Deer River to natural storage areas in dry regions of East Central Alberta.

Hayden assured the Advocate at the time that only a “tiny” amount of the water would be used for irrigation, as required for flow control.

Watkinson-Zimmer said on Monday that she is concerned with the potential for that amount to increase rapidly.

No one begrudges providing water to feed cattle and for people to use in their own homes, she said. But she is deeply concerned about the potential for large amounts of water to be pumped onto crops.

“The word is irrigation — that scares me. I know very well they’re not going to be irrigating five million acres, but they’re going to be irrigating quite a bit. Perhaps, if somebody gets a tiny bit and the neighbour wants a tiny bit, how far does a tiny bit go?”

Watkinson-Zimmer said that regardless of what the project looks like from the outset, there is potential for it to be modified to meet people’s expectations, at a heavy cost to what she calls the smallest, cleanest and least-allocated river in the South Saskatchewan River Basin.

Largely because of irrigation demands, the Milk and Bow Rivers are fully allocated while the Old Man River is over-allocated, leaving the Red Deer to make up the amount that is guaranteed to Saskatchewan, said Watkinson-Zimmer.

To meet 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.

There would be no water transferred between river basins for the Special Areas project, said David Hennig, assistant communications director for Alberta Agriculture. Hayden said previously that all flood water diverted for the Special Areas would be stored for the farms, homes and businesses to which it is directed.

While Watkinson-Zimmer welcomes the environmental impact assessment, she said the process has to be “wide open” and members of the public must be involved.

Tim Creedon, executive director of the Red Deer Chamber of Commerce, said it will likely be early next year before his organization forms an official policy on the project. The Chamber elects a new board in September and would need to have a committee study the issue and then come back with a recommendation, said Creedon.

The Special Areas was settled in the 1920s, during a period when the region was unusually lush. But those conditions changed and it is now widely understood that it is an arid area, commonly affected by drought.

What’s unusual now is that there is talk of diverting water from a river to help contradict that drought, said Watkinson-Zimmer.

The first of two phases of environmental impact assessment is now underway and is expected to take three years, at a cost of about $1 million.

A second phase will take another two years.

bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com