The South Saskatchewan River runs dry   (Page 4 of 4)

The river is the lifeblood of the prairies, but its future flow will be determined by a supply-demand equation — and the math doesn’t look promising

By Allan Casey with photography by Nayan Sthankiya

“While climate change could have grave consequences for the river in the not too distant future, we have hardly begun to understand the river of the present, let alone manage it.”

Our ascent begins at the base of Nakiska Ski Resort, built for the 1988 Calgary Olympics. “This whole valley is a research facility, but we travel at the pleasure of the ski resort,” says Pomeroy when we find the main gate locked. We park and begin a tedious march up the resort service road to reach deep snow. We stop to don our snowshoes but at this time of year we sink through the melting drifts and it is awkward scrambling over the bare spots — like mountain climbing in swim fins.

After three sweaty hours, the view across the Kananaskis valley opens up and the stainless steel glint of scientific equipment can be seen in the stunted larch and fir ahead. Fisera Ridge is exposed to the full blast of high-mountain weather, and a battery of sensing equipment is in place to record the action. Snowfall, rain, wind, solar radiation, snow reflectivity and snow depth are all measured. Working together, Pomeroy and Guan sound the snowpack with a metal probe, cut core samples and weigh them. This thin veil of late-spring snow, less than a metre deep, is the delicate fabric from which a river is made.

Researchers have measured winds of 160 kilometres per hour here, but at the moment, it is perfectly still. Over lunch, with the distractingly beautiful front-range peaks as a backdrop, Pomeroy gives me his overview of water science and the future of the South Saskatchewan.

“We never rationalized this work on the basis of climate change,” says Pomeroy. While that looming threat could have grave consequences for the river in the not too distant future, we have hardly begun to understand the river of the present, let alone manage it. “You have to crawl before you can walk.”

That, says Pomeroy, requires far more monitoring than we currently deploy, especially in these mountain basins that are the lifeblood of the prairie river. “Environment Canada has one high-altitude weather station in the Rockies. Upstream of Banff, only one stream is gauged. We don’t have a single snout of a glacier monitored.” Lack of data, he says, impedes our ability to make even basic weather predictions, let alone make forecasts for avalanches, flood, irrigation water supply, forest fires or drought.

The drought of 1999-2004, the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history, reduced the GDP by nearly $6 billion. Pomeroy, who once worked on the troubled Colorado River, says U.S. government agencies have learned that scrimping on data is false economy. American federal agencies are heavy funders of environmental monitoring. In Canada, such basics fall between administrative cracks all too often. “Why doesn’t Agriculture Canada have monitoring stations in the Rockies, since so many farmers’ livelihoods depend on what happens here?”

Pomeroy helps run two large research networks that use the Marmot data, the Drought Research Initiative and the IP3 Network. Although these brain collectives are building new hydrological models potentially worth billions to the economy, their funding is precarious and due to run out altogether by year’s end.

“In Canada, we like to have our ecosystems as intact as possible, which is a good thing,” says Pomeroy. “We also like to have our water essentially free of charge, or close to it. We cannot have both anymore.” As for the muddy Saskatchewan, Pomeroy echoes a theme: we three million prairie folk are luckier than the roughly 30 million in the Colorado River Basin and face nothing like the hardship of the 2.1 billion who depend on Himalayan rivers. Nonetheless, our own South Saskatchewan River is all spoken for and then some.

“A lot of civilizations have ended because they screwed up their water,” says Pomeroy as we ready ourselves to begin the descent, following this humble bellwether creek down toward the prairie, into its future. “We are living in an area where a complex civilization has never been hosted. Frankly, the jury is still out on whether it can be done.”

Allan Casey is the author of Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada. He lives in Saskatoon, as does photographer Nayan Sthankiya.