Prairie Flood Management and Mitigation Seminar …

There are concerns with flooding in the Yorkton region based on events such as the July 1, 2010 rains in the city, and the spring run-off of 2011.

But experience in The Netherlands, a country where much of it lies below sea level, shows you can deal with great amounts of water and still live as a community.

"About 60 per cent of our country is flood prone," said George Peters, Project Director Advisory Group Design & Realization for River Deltas and Coasts, Royal HaskoningDHV in The Netherlands. He added 10 million people live behind dikes."

In fact The Netherlands "international airport is about 500-feet below sea level," he said.

So The Netherlands has to work with water.

"We had to find a way to live together with the water," said Peters.

Peters, who was speaking at the Prairie Flood Management and Mitigation Seminar in Yorkton last Wednesday, said it's not a case where floods no longer occur in The Netherlands, but they have taken such events as a way to learn more about dealing with water.

"We've learned a lot from past floods Every time we've learned our lessons," he said, adding "major floods trigger expertise."

Peters pointed to a major flood which hit the country hard, but it also created new sciences which have helped the country deal with water since.

Another severe flood hit in 1953 starting a major dike building system, a "project completed in 1986," said Peters.

It was the science that has allowed The Netherlands to create a series of dams, dikes and waterways which are in-part thought of today as one of the modern wonders of the world.

"Farmers are actually farming on the seabed," noted Peters.

But for all the science and engineering success does not mean they control every drop of water, whether from the sea, rivers, of rain, said Peters, adding there "are still near misses today," he said.

In cases where water still breeches the established defences, "people need to act," said Peters.

Peters said any defence system will fail under some conditions.

"The weakest link of the chain determines the strength of the defence." he said.

And moving forward there will be additional challenges to holding back the water in The Netherlands, said Peters, pointing to issues such as climate change.

"We must be prepared, be proactive," he said, adding they want to move ahead with preparedness "rather than clean up the damage afterwards."

To stay ahead of the water Peters said The Netherlands must always "apply out of the box solutions," in terms of "research, monitoring and development of new concepts."

As it stands The Netherlands spends six billion Euros annually on water control.

"That's a massive amount of money, but the do-nothing option is not an option in The Netherlands," offered Peters.

Peters said even with the science and new ideas, there is a need to make sure the investments are valid. He said, "the value of the land muster balance with these investments.

"You have to map the risks and know where the high risks are."

Having benchmark data to build a water management plan on is important.

It is that benchmark data the Land & Infrastructure Resiliency Assessment Project (LIRA) begins to build for the Assiniboine River Watershed through a pilot project initiative said Aron Hershmiller.

Hershmiller, who is manager of the Assiniboine Watershed Stewardship Association (AWSA), was speaking at the Prairie Flood Management and Mitigation Seminar in Yorkton last Wednesday.

It is understood water can have dramatic effects within the watershed, said Hershmiller.

"Extreme run off events can cause flows that may prove disastrous to urban and rural municipalities and the watershed they inhabit," he said.

And so the idea to gather data regarding potential flow courses to understand how the watershed works was undertaken.

"It's trying to be proactive," said Hershmiller, who said the more data they have to work from the better able municipalities will be able to prepare for extreme events.

In the case of LIRA, Hershmiller said it used a five-step approach to collect data, starting with a detailed mapping of the landscape.

On a primarily flat Prairie landscape it is not always easy to predict where excess water will flow, and mapping is needed to help build better flow models.

Cameron Kayter, Land Resource Specialist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and the local LIRA project said the data around Prairie hydrology is limited. So the project focused on "what happens outside of riverine (near river) areas."

LIRA was looking "to identify drainage paths in a landscape," said Kayter.

A detailed map also helps with the second step, doing a hazard assessment, said Hershmiller, noting they "identified land use on each parcel of land."

That knowledge is important since some uses are more critical to protect.

In that regard LIRA "is more designed as an economic study," offered Hershmiller.

With detailed maps, LIRA becomes a tool, making it able to "create some flood map scenarios overlapping on the mapping," said Hershmiller.

The maps showing potential flood patterns can quickly identify which high value properties might be at risk.

In drawing the data together Hershmiller said they did not go simply with recorded data, but turned to residents for first-hand reports of flood situations.

"The value of the local knowledge is key," he said.

"Some projects can't derive the answers from one model. Gathering local knowledge and putting it toward the project is important."

Hershmiller said local knowledge is a way to verify maps based on their first-hand experiences with area waterflows.

As an example he said in talking to farmers you can "get a general idea where flooding and damage will occur."

With a map and scenarios in place, you can start developing adaptive options of how best to meet flood conditions to ensure the lowest amount of damage, especially to high value assets.

Kayter said having such detail can help quantify responses.

"If I invest a dollar in adaptation, what do I get back?" he asked, noting LIRA helps answer that question.

In the end LIRA is a step toward a plan based on better information, said Kayter, adding it should be used to create "a regional approach to floodwater planning and management."

The loss of natural wetland is having an effect of water quality on the Canadian Prairies says a Ducks Unlimited Canada research scientist.

Pascal Badiou spoke at Prairie Flood Management and Mitigation Seminar in Yorkton last Wednesday.

In addition to affecting water quality the loss of wetlands impacts the overall system to handle high water events, whether from snow melt, of high rain events, said Badiou.

If wetlands are important to the overall water system, then the level of their loss is troubling.

"Globally we have lost 50 per cent of the world's wetlands in the last 100-years," said Badiou.

Canada is important in terms of wetlands.

"An estimated 25 per cent of the world's wetlands are found in Canada," said Badiou.

But that does not mean we are not seeing wetland loss, particularly on the Prairie region, where an estimated 90 per cent of naturally occurring wetlands have been lost.

In southern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba over the last 40-60 years 350,000 hectares of wetlands have been lost.

"In Alberta there's also a significant lost amount of wetlands," noted Badiou.

Badiou said there is a "notion it's (wetland drainage) is not continuing, or ramping up."

But he said the notion is wrong.

"Wetland drainage is in fact growing," he said.

Badiou pointed to a study over 2008/09 in the Weldon, SK. area where drainage and ditching in the small locale equalled three years of DU wetland reclamation work in the entire province.

Badiou said one of the problems has been a lack of research into what a wetland on the Canadian Prairies means in terms of an overall watershed area. In that regard DU has undertaken work in the Broughten Watershed in Manitoba.

One of the first things that became obvious is when a wetland is drained, the water it once held must move somewhere else.

"As you drain wetlands it adds more and more water to a catchment area," said Badiou, adding that means the nutrients and sediments in the water also move farther down the system.

In the Broughton Watershed Badiou said from 1968 to 2005 the contributing area has grown by 50 per cent because of wetland loss, and that means significantly more nutrients downstream of the system.

In Manitoba much of the water eventually finds its way to Lake Winnipeg, which Badiou pointed is considered "the sickest lake on the planet." The blue/green algae, the type bad for livestock to drink and humans to swim in, is so bad it can be seen in satellite pictures, he noted.

Research has shown the issue is not waste from towns and cities but "nutrients coming off the landscape."

"Essentially it's the toilet bowl of Western Canada," said Badiou.

Badiou said draining wetlands contributes significantly to the nutrient load moving farther down the system, in particular in the case of phosphorous.

"The phosphorous content at the outlet of trained wetlands is always very high," he said. "We know draining wetlands is moving nutrients off the land."

Badiou said wetlands for 100 years were areas where nutrients collected, so when drained, water moving off the land leeches those nutrients and carry them into the water system.

If a wetland remains intact the nutrients "collected over thousands of years" remain captured.

A wetland is also a holding pond of sorts in cases of severe storm weather evens.

"Wetlands do have a role in mitigating those events," said Badiou, adding when a wetland fills it "causes local flooding," but in terms of water management it cannot be looked at in such narrow, localized terms. "You never just look at one watershed. It's got to be a regional approach." He added " water from drained wetlands is the part of run-off we can control."

Badiou said he does understand why farmers look to drain wetland acres.

"The economic signals are drain the wetlands, grow that canola," he said, adding he recognizes landowners face pressures of "increasing productivity, of increasing efficiency."

Badiou also said government and society play a role, and so far are failing to aid wetland protection enough.

"Society undervalues wetlands," he said. "Government wetland policy and legislation is inadequate. Wetland programs are inadequate."

In terms of programs, Badiou said "there is ample opportunity to restore wetlands," but it comes at a cost.

To reclaim 265 per cent of wetlands lost since 1950 it would cost an estimated $250 million.

That said Badiou said the most important step is to stop future drainage.

"We've got to stop the bleeding," he said, reiterating "wetlands have a fair significant impact on water quantity and quality on the Canadian Prairies."