“Every drop counts” is the creed at Alberta Irrigation, and it’s never been more true. With enough canals to reach from Newfoundland to the Alaska border and nearly back again, replacing those ditches with pipelines has been a key issue for the organization’s 13 irrigation districts.
“There’s roughly 8,000 kilometres of canals and laterals, of that about 2,500 kilometres have been put into pipelines,” said Ron McMullin, executive director of Alberta Irrigation.
The undertaking, which has been underway since 1969, is huge but also comes with a big payoff – although only five per cent of Alberta is irrigated, that area accounts for 20 per cent of gross agricultural production.
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“There’s a little over 1.3 million acres of irrigation in the districts and there’s about 300,000 acres of irrigation that is private,” said McMullin. “About 99 per cent of the irrigation is south of Red Deer.”
While canal irrigation still works, pipelines make better use of the available water.
“The ditches were constructed in earth material, so they have a certain amount of leakage or seepage,” said McMullin. “You also have evaporation and water-using plants along the ditch that in essence suck water out.”
Better control
Pipelines eliminate those problems. However, the biggest advantage isn’t in defying Mother Nature, it’s in more precise control.
“When a farmer orders water, more water is then turned into the ditch and you have to do that at least a day in advance,” said McMullin. “When you want to shut off the water, you have to give notice again. You can’t just turn it on and turn it off.
“Whereas if you have a pipeline system, often you can just increase that water with the demand and shut it off after the demand is gone. The water going to a farm can be more precisely controlled and that is where the bulk of the water saving is.”
Overall, switching from canals to pipelines conserves, or increases, water volume by 10 per cent. Because pipelines are buried, farmers regain land.
The irrigation districts develop three-year plans to prioritize improvement projects in their respective districts. For every $25 producers put in, the government puts in $75. Annually, the province contributes $24 million per year to cost share the upgrades.
“Part of the reason for that is this is a big economic generator and has spinoff for all the communities, the farm supply dealers and everybody else,” says McMullin. “If you go just across the border, the farmers there really struggle with keeping the systems up, because their government hasn’t had the foresight that this is good for the whole economy and just not for an individual group of farmers.”
Water-saving technology
Many producers are putting their own money into more efficient equipment such as low-pressure drop tube pivots, the most efficient option for the crops grown in irrigated areas. In fact, McMullin says on the global scene of large-scale irrigation, Canada is second only to France in efficiency.
“A lot of that is attributed to these joint contributions between government and the districts because they try to keep things in good condition and improve efficiency.”
It will take many years to complete the switch from canals to pipelines. However, the districts are conserving water by other means, such as installing plastic lining under seeping canals.
As pipelines are introduced, there is habitat loss for wildlife. Alberta Irrigation has a 70-year-old relationship with Ducks Unlimited and in that time, 82,000 acres of wetlands have been created, and more is being done to mitigate the detrimental effect of the pipelines.
“Yes, we do lose some habitat as we put in the pipelines, but there is a program the districts are involved in and it’s called Partners in Habitat Development, and we plant trees and shrubbery to offset some of this,” said McMullin.
Approximately 700,000 trees and shrubs have been planted to date.
Residents in other parts of the province might have difficulty relating to the arid conditions in the south, but to the people who live on the prairie, irrigation is important for much more than just agriculture.
“The irrigation system is very much tied into the fabric of society down here,” said McMullin.
