Clock ticking as M.D. of Pincher Creek chases water solutions

We’re in a pretty serious water crisis right now. We began trucking water around mid August last year, both potable and raw water. So we were trucking raw water from downstream of the dam and then potable water from third party contractors in the town of Pincher Creek to our plant to make up the volume for our users and that’s been ongoing. So how did they get there? First, a bit of context. The Old Man Dam is fed by Three Rivers, the Crow’s Nest River, Castle River, and Old Man River. It’s controlled by a spillway that releases water downstream to towns downriver. When there’s enough water from rain or snow melt, reservoirs upstream of the dam fill up and that is where the water treatment plant near Cowley gets its raw water that would normally feed communities like Cowley, Lundbreck and Beaver Mines. It was a combination of things. We didn’t get spring rains. We were kind of in a drought situation. It was an early melt last year. The water release was quite a bit earlier than normal and there’s lots of downstream demands on the water which pulling the dam that slow. Our intakes, which are located in the Old Man reservoir, breach the surface of the Old Man reservoir. Due to the dropping levels, we do have a temporary pumping set up now in the reservoir that’s that’s making up about 75% of our volumes and then 25% of our volumes. We’re still relying on potable water from the town of Pincher Creek. We had permission to drill two wells and the construction that’s going on in the dam’s footprint is to get those wells established and get them hooked up to our water treatment plant. At the peak of the crisis, this arrangement was costing the MD roughly $7500 a day and the cost is growing. And now the MD is also facing a ticking clock because the reservoir is due to fill up with spring runoff. Based on current snowpack levels, we might end up in a situation where the reservoir fills up past our intakes temporarily again and then drops below our intakes and that bed gets completely saturated and it takes a while to dry out once that level drops again. The long term outlook is it’s got to be a two fold solution. Number one, they need some sort of reliability in their water supply. However that happens, I suspect they’ll be long term modifications to Old Man reservoir. There could be talk of diversions, intra basin diversions, where you’re moving the water from one section of the same river basin into the Old Man reservoir. But then the other thing that absolutely has to be part of the conversation is efficiency. What are we doing with that water? How are we using it? How can we make better use of the water that we do have? Managing water supply is also starting to reach downstream awareness. This concern was evident among attendees at a recent screening of a documentary that delved into the water challenges facing the region. Yeah, right here. We used to ice fish a few years ago and 15 feet of water. I’m mostly concerned that when we’re talking about allocations, we’re talking about people and irrigators downstream. The discussion’s not about what’s left in the waters for the fish, for the wildlife, for the forest. Alberta has had periods of drought and flood, but if we’re not prepared for those natural cycles, let alone the extra pressure that we’re putting on the systems, I just don’t see how we can have a sustainable society back in Cowley, the water trucking continues. If we get another dryer here, who knows what’s going to happen to a lot of people and a lot of their farms, you know, they rely on this, this dam for irrigation. I mean, it was so low this summer that you could have walked across in runners and not got your feet wet. Hopefully we don’t see it. Again, you can’t modify the weather and we live in an area that has some pretty extreme variations. Water management is part of life. Time is ticking on this construction project, but a broader conversation around how water will be shared in this semi arid portion of the province still looms and news on that is coming this week. Results from ongoing water license negotiations are expected on April 19th. Joel Dryden, CBC News, Calgary.