'A race against time': Alberta community chasing solutions after months of hauling water

Not far from the town of Pincher Creek, resting in the eastern shadow of the Canadian Rockies, two men wearing coveralls are in the midst of a task that, by now, they've done hundreds of times.

The pair have parked their tanker trucks full of water next to each other at an unassuming plant north of Cowley, Alta.

They curl long green and yellow hoses out and up a hillside and raise the covering of a nearby treated water tank.

The trucks roar to life, and soon, a steady flow of water gushes through the hoses and pours into the cavernous space. Peering into the darkness, one can see the reserves slowly begin to pool.

It's now April 9. But this is how things have started here, every day, since last August, as the Municipal District of Pincher Creek — home to just more than 3,000 people — has been grappling with an ongoing water crisis brought on by low levels in a nearby reservoir. 

Multiple truckloads of water, just like these two, are brought in daily by third-party contractors from Pincher Creek. 

Tomorrow, workers will be back to do it all over again. At the peak of the crisis, this arrangement was costing the M.D. roughly $7,500 a day. Since August, the total price tag has added up to more than $1 million — no small change for a municipality this size.

As the duo continues their work, a pickup truck rounds a nearby road the M.D. was recently required to build — at a cost of another $100,000 — to allow water tankers to access and leave the site.

In the truck is David Desabrais, who manages utilities and infrastructure with the M.D. of Pincher Creek. He parks and exits the vehicle, wearing a yellow construction vest.

The community's water challenges are clearly so familiar and front of mind to Desabrais that they need no introduction. He starts talking about them simply by referencing "the crisis."

"It's certainly a challenge for our water operations, when we run this way," he said.

It's all been a pricey solution to a complicated problem for the municipal district, which provides water to the nearby communities of Cowley, Beaver Mines, Lundbreck and the Castle Mountain ski resort.

'It's a race against time'

The Oldman Dam was authorized in the 1980s by former premier Peter Lougheed to mitigate the impacts of droughts experienced in southern Alberta. It was constructed in the early 1990s.

In recent years, low streams have been more common in the south than some people realize, said Shannon Frank, executive director of the Oldman Watershed Council.

Some creeks, like Willow Creek and Beaver Creek, have been drying up entirely. But this is different.

"Certainly, we are in a drought, and those larger rivers … we're not used to seeing them that low," Frank said.

From the treatment plant, Desabrais drives down the road to the nearby Oldman reservoir. He exits the vehicle, walks up a hill, and a full view slowly comes into focus, vast and brown.

With dropping levels in the reservoir, the M.D.'s intakes — which pipe flow to the plant — breached the surface, making it impossible to draw water. 

Given the high costs of hauling water, the M.D. installed a temporary pumping setup in the reservoir, which today provides about 75 per cent of its needed water. 

It's a temporary solution. And more work needs to be done.

To mitigate the community's water challenges, the M.D. has been looking at just about every project under the sun, both "crazy and good," says Desabrais. 

They narrowed it down to a $1.7-million underground intake project — essentially, trying to draw water from below the surface, connected to the Crowsnest River. 

Ideally, it means they'd be able to access water from the reservoir, even during drought.

But it's a challenging project. The M.D. is working in an area of the Oldman Dam that is subject to regulatory oversight of many different government bodies. 

And though it has about seven authorizations in place to start the work, the M.D. is also facing a ticking clock because the reservoir is due to fill up with spring runoff. 

That's good news temporarily. But it's possible the reservoir might fill up past the M.D.'s intakes temporarily, then proceed to once again drop below. 

Moving forward with construction on the project should that happen would be very difficult. It would be near impossible to traverse the area on foot, let alone with construction equipment.

"It takes a while for it to dry out after … because it's a lake," he said.

The pressure is on.

"Yeah. We're in a bit of a race against time," Desabrais said. 

"We don't really have many other economic options, besides constructing where we are."

It's hard to know for sure what to expect in terms of timing. Typically, runoff starts at the end of April, but in the past, it's started around the middle of the month.

All that to say, if the reservoir fills too soon, finishing construction is far from certain.

Supply and demand

Some users in the region have their own water sources, says David Cox, reeve of the M.D. of Pincher Creek. Others were much more anxious about whether they'd have access to water, especially for livestock. 

The hope for Cox and Desabrais is that construction of the $1.7-million project, should it be completed in time, will provide some relief to the immediate crisis. But there are bigger challenges at play.

"There is a big demand for water … and, understanding the dam was built for irrigation, and to supply water downstream to Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Fort Macleod," Cox said.

"Plus all of the South Saskatchewan demands within Saskatchewan. It feeds a big, big chunk around."

Alberta has the largest irrigated area in Canada, most of which is located along the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB). The Oldman sub-basin, located within the SSRB, has been closed to new surface water allocations since 2006. 

In practice, it means that across the SSRB, various users like the M.D. of Pincher Creek share a limited, and increasingly taxed, water supply in the south.

"As everybody grows, the demand for water goes up. So in normal situations, we're probably fine," Cox said. "In drought years, everybody's going to have to co-operate."

The situation that has unfolded in the M.D. has been very unfortunate, said Frank, the executive director of the Oldman Watershed Council. The dam, primarily built for irrigation, was drained fairly low for that purpose, she noted.

The lesson to be learned here is that reservoirs can't always be depended upon, Frank said, in situations of drought where there isn't enough rain and snowmelt to fill them up. 

"I think it's just a case of our expectations need to change, and our planning processes need to adapt to the more extreme events that are being predicted with climate change," she said.

Meanwhile, in Cowley

The village of Cowley, northwest of Pincher Creek, is one of the communities that has had to have water trucked in. Jerry Dadson, taking his dog for a walk on a quiet day, says it was a shock to see how things played out last summer.

"It was down so low. There was all kinds of trucks going down the road to haul it out," Dadson said. 

"They just pull off the highway. They come in, usually they hit in the morning and mid-afternoon and late at night. But they're always, always going."

Edward Dingreville, who lives north of Cowley, said he had to haul water to his farm.

"I mean, if we get another dry year here, who knows what's going to happen to a lot of people and a lot of their farms," Dingreville said.

"They rely on this dam for irrigation. I mean, it was so low this summer that you could've walked across it in runners."

The future of water

Managing water supply has become a big focus for the Livingstone Landowners Group, which represents landowners in the Livingston-Porcupine Hills area of southwest Alberta. The group organized a viewing of a new documentary focused on water issues in Lethbridge on April 9. 

"I'm mostly concerned that when we're talking about allocations, we're talking about people and irrigators downstream," said Nila Heard, one of more than 120 in attendance. 

"The discussion is not about what's left in the waters for the fish, for the wildlife, for the forests."

Maddy Skinner, who was also at the documentary viewing, noted that Alberta has had periods of drought and flood before.

"But if we're not prepared for those natural cycles, let alone the extra pressures that we're putting on the systems, I just don't see how we can have a sustainable society," Skinner said.

Tricia Stadnyk, a professor and Canada Research Chair in hydrologic modelling with the University of Calgary's Schulich School of Engineering, noted that many people in Alberta living outside major cities utilize groundwater. 

Groundwater refers to water found underground, accessed by digging wells. Levels of groundwater fluctuate, and low snowpack has posed issues over the past few years, said Stadnyk.

More than 600,000 rural Albertans depend on groundwater for drinking water, according to the provincial government.

"The groundwater levels are actually dropping faster now. Those levels are not rebounding, they're going lower and lower," Stadnyk said.

Groundwater is recharged from surface water — ponds, lakes, rivers and wetlands. 

But if Alberta doesn't have extra surface water from rain and snowmelt, and there's no moisture in the soil, then there's no way for groundwater levels to recharge, Stadnyk said.

"We are seeing record-low groundwater levels in some of our wells in the mountain areas. This is of concern to the people that depend on groundwater and depend on water supply in regions that are more water scarce," she said.

Frank said government has been preparing people for the year ahead. Provincial water-sharing agreements, due to be announced later this week, will also help. There is a chance provincial initiatives could cushion the blow of this year's challenges.

But her focus is not just on this year, but the years to come.

It's not unexpected that a drought could last 10 or 20 years, which has happened in Alberta's semi-arid south historically.

"Are we prepared for that 10-year drought or really long-term drought?" Frank said.

This story is part of CBC Calgary's ongoing series, When In Drought, which explores Alberta's drought conditions — and how best to handle them. You can find the other stories here.