Saskatchewan could be facing its worst drought on record

Nearly every long-lasting summer drought in Saskatchewan yields responses from farmers declaring that drought as the worst anyone in the area can remember.

Well, according to Dr. John Pomeroy, the Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change, farmers might have a case this year.

“This particular drought is a good wake-up call for Saskatchewan. It has the greatest spatial coverage and uniformity, and some of the greatest severity of any drought we’ve ever had,” Pomeroy said.

“It’s not over yet, so it’s hard to call it the most severe drought ever, but it’s headed in that direction.”

According to the province’s latest crop report, topsoil moisture is rated as three per cent adequate, 31 per cent short and 66 per cent very short. Hay and pasture land topsoil moisture is rated as two per cent adequate, 25 per cent short and 73 per cent very short.

The worst drought was recorded in 1961 when portions of the province received roughly 60 per cent less precipitation than normal, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. This year’s drought is expected to cover a larger area than in 1961.

“Soil moisture levels are about 40 per cent or less of where they should be at this time of year,” Pomeroy said. “Soils are so dry that there’s very little runoff, so water isn’t going to recharge wetlands, streams or creeks in the province, either.”

The University of Saskatchewan hydrologist figures “hundreds of millimetres of rain” would be needed to get soil moisture levels back to where they’re supposed to be, an extremely unlikely event with little rain expected in the forecast.

It’s dry, hot and it’s barely rained in months.

But Pomeroy said farmers and ranchers didn’t help themselves by depleting wetlands across the province over many decades.

Tractors, track hoes and bulldozers have become a common sight among Saskatchewan farms draining and cultivating wetlands to increase productivity and seeded acres.

Water, when it does come, eventually runs off into any stream or large lakes, like the Quill Lakes, which has had rising water far beyond its banks to create flooding problems for decades in central Saskatchewan. What was once three lakes is now the largest saline lake in Canada.

“It’s reduced the holding capacity of a river basin and the landscape,” Pomeroy said of the common practice. “Also, that water carries nutrients, fertilizer and phosphorus, which feeds algae blooms and causes our lakes to go green.”

In a drought situation, new problems emerge.

“Sloughs, ponds and wetlands are the areas where groundwater is recharged,” Pomeroy said. “We’ve actually inadvertently cut off the recharge of groundwater in many areas, and it evaporates very quickly back in the atmosphere to help form rainfall.

“In a drought year, we could really use that water coming down as precipitation. Without as many sloughs and wetlands, we actually worsen the drought.”

To combat the growing number of illegal drainage sites recreating the landscape, the Water Security Agency (WSA) helped the province form Bill 44, legislation that would eventually pass to require landowners to license all their drainage works by obtaining a permit rather than complying with a complaint.

It’s done little to affect either flooding problems or drought problems currently plaguing the province.

“Unfortunately, what seemed like a good water management technique to farmers during wet periods so they could get on their fields and operate large tractors not only causes problems downstream, but causes problems during drought periods,” Pomeroy said.

To his memory, Pomeroy believes the WSA has approved every permit it has received.

With climate change expected to increase the planet’s temperature and create longer-lasting droughts in the future, Pomeroy hopes farmers and the province can help prevent future dust bowls.

“We have tax incentives for farmers to get as much land into production as possible, we need to put incentives in there to make it worthwhile financially for farmers to retain those wetlands and the roles they provide,” he said.

With even Lake Diefenbaker’s reserves being tested due to very little runoff from the Rocky Mountains in Alberta — well before a $4B irrigation expansion project — Pomeroy isn’t expecting these issues to subside anytime soon.

“If we’re putting pressure on the system right now, and it looks like we are, to expand it and expect that to be reliable in a drought is a fantasy,” Pomeroy said.

The 2021 drought is well on its path to become one of the worst droughts in Saskatchewan’s history, but if patterns don’t change, Pomeroy suggests this drought could soon fade in the memory of farmers like countless other droughts have in the past.

“I think we’ll look back on years like this in the future as relatively benign,” he said. “We can expect worse in the future, unfortunately.”