Understanding Water Management on the Farm

Emily Mailhot Reporter – Vegreville News Advertiser

On Tuesday, April 9th, Tingley’s Harvest Centre hosted some of the local agriculture community for an all-morning workshop at the Vegreville Social Centre.

The event was organized on a mandate from Elmer’s by Henry Hammer of Elmer’s to launch their new and improved Wolverine ditcher, along with coorganiser Claus Toerper of Vantage Canada, and presented as many details on water management as they could fit into the sessions.

Though the product launch was started with the phrase, “There is more than one way to dig a ditch,” an underlying theme of “There is more than one way to handle water management,” prevailed through presentations on wetland history, laws, responsibility to the land, and new technology.

After giving a slideshow on the Wolverine ditcher, Henry Hammer passed the microphone over to agronomist Trevor Thornton of Soil Optix. Thornton walked the crowd through the details of how high-resolution soil mapping works and what it can do for your croplands by sensing gamma radiation, as well as levels of sand, silt, phosphates, nitrogen, pH, clubroot risk, and more on a 12-foot-by- 12-foot basis. “When you calculate the potential loss versus what it costs; how can we afford not to do it?”

Next on the agenda was Jay White, principal researcher and founder of Aquality Environmental Consulting, who gave a presentation titled, “History of Water Resources, Laws, Permitting, and Future Responsibilities.” In his presentation, White described the necessary permits, as well as the history, of both green and white wetlands in the province.

“The Water Act, as we know it now, was first introduced in its original form when Alberta became a province, and classifies all bodies of water as belonging to the Crown,” explained White, “From there, the Feds issue permits for who can do what around certain areas… A mistake they made in that original process is that they didn’t put a deadline on any of the original permits, so we have privately-issued bodies of water on permits that are nearly 100 years old.” As the Water Act is very broad on what constitutes as a “body of water,” White helped attendees understand the definition better.

“The Water Act prohibits anyone from draining, altering, or infilling wetlands on private or public land unless authorized to do so by the Province through an approval under the provisions of the Act.”

And, further, “An activity is defined as placing, constructing, operating, maintaining, removing, or disturbing works, maintaining, removing, or disturbing ground, vegetation, or other material, or carrying out any undertaking, including but not limited to groundwater exploration, in or on any land, water, or water body…(etc.)”

“Basically,” White explained, “Don’t do anything to any water anywhere until you’ve talked to the province about it.”

Similar to calling before you dig to ensure no gas lines will be hit, issues of moving or potentially contaminating water supplies could have very serious consequences. This information led into the next presentation, in which Claus Toerper closed the event off on behalf of Vantage Canada with information on the differences between drainage and planned, responsible water management, and integrating technology to remove the guesswork and inefficiencies.

“We’ve just seen a presentation from an environmental consultant on the approval process etc., and how we work together to create a plan, so I am following with some more information on how we provide the data for him with typography and slopes and everything.”

“I think every farmer should be aware,” said Toerper about the event, “of course we always like to sell our products and equipment, we believe we have a very good solution and experience, but more-so what is required in the bigger picture of water management and how to handle it responsibly.”