Ryan Kiedrowski
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The World-Spectator
Water is a widely debated issue in rural Saskatchewan, especially when it comes to who can divert it where and when. Recently, the Water Security Agency released their Agricultural Water Stewardship Policy and a $1 million-dollar commitment over the next three years devoted to ongoing research and monitoring as a way to ensure long-term outcomes in their plan are met.
“We started work on this in 2019 with doing a bunch of demonstration and research projects, and then over the last two years have been when we’re really actively engaging with the various different stakeholders and communities involved,” said Krystal Tendler, Executive Director of Agriculture Water Management with the WSA.
“We engaged with 80 stakeholders, but beyond that, everyone in the province has some sort of connection to water—whether you’re a cabin owner, you like to fish, or whether you just drink some water out of the tap or you’re a farmer—you have some sort of connection, you have some sort of interest. Our job was trying to balance all those interests and create that science-based policy.”
Coming up with the policy has not been an easy task, and Tendler says the end product will not totally please all stakeholders.
“For some, they would like to see a more restrictive policy that went—maybe some would say—as far as banning drainage, where some would say, ‘I don’t want to see any more rules in place. I want to be able to manage water on my farm’,” Tendler explained. “Those are the two ends of the spectrum, and we found a policy that kind of landed in the middle. I think for the majority of folks, the middle ground is the right spot to be.”
Saskatchewan producers are the caretakers of over 40 per cent of farmland across Canada with some 4.6 million acres of wetlands also in their stewardship. The WSA policy provides a guide to how many wetlands on agricultural land can be drained and how many need to be retained, managing the province’s water and agri-environmental priorities, water quality and quantity, wildlife habitat, and soil health.
“Our role is to ensure drainage is being done responsibly and managing any of those downstream impacts,” Tendler said. “We have a suite of different mitigation tools and policies in place, and this particular policy, the stewardship policy, completes that suite to make sure that we have the right tools to manage those impacts.”
In total, there are over 16.3 million acres of wetlands in Saskatchewan with around 10 per cent of agricultural land being covered. These wetlands can be of various sizes, but by definition a wetland is saturated land seeing water stand long enough to promote wetland or aquatic processes. This includes rivers, lakes, potholes, peatlands, and even areas that usually dry up over the course of a growing season.
“The policy applies to any agricultural drainage works, so typically, those are being done by farmers,” Tendler said. “There is some works that RMs are advancing that kind of fall into that category if it’s outside of their actual municipal developments, but typically they are farmer-led projects that it’s most relevant to.”
The first step for producers with a need to drain a wetland is to contact the WSA.
“We have an agriculture water management program, and we would work them through that,” Tendler explained. “A lot of it’s about making sure we have a good design project, where you want the water to go, how are we going to control the flows downstream, what are we going to do to prevent erosion, and making sure that any downstream landowners are involved in a part of that process.”
Where this new policy comes into play is ensuring at least some of those wetlands remain on the landscape.
“There’s room to V-ditch, absolutely, but let’s keep some wetlands in place,” said Tendler, who added that producers are in favour of keeping those wetland acres. “We actually just completed a wetland inventory for the majority of the province, and it’s been really interesting to see the results of that. We’ve found that 86 per cent of wetlands in Saskatchewan right now are undrained. I think it really speaks to the role that Saskatchewan producers have played. They’re the caretaker of the majority of those wetlands, and they’re choosing to keep them and be the stewards of them.”
Continued maintenance
Another large component of the policy is sustaining those wetlands for future generations, which is where the ‘research and monitoring’ portion comes into play.
“We’ve established 10 indicators that we’re going to be tracking over the next number of years that will help us understand how the policy is being implemented and whether it’s effective in achieving what it set out to do,” Tendler said.
Some factors that will be taken into account include the number of wetlands staying on the landscape, water quality, habitat, and compliance with conditions of approvals.
“Some of that $1 million will help support that type of monitoring,” Tendler confirmed. “It will also go towards more of a forward-looking approach. There’s still things we don’t know about drainage and agriculture water management in the Saskatchewan context. In other jurisdictions, they’ve been doing this for 100 years; in Saskatchewan, we’re really just, I’d say, at the start of what could happen.”
Through continued research, the WSA seeks to answer questions of how to better manage water quality, what can be learned from the economics of drainage, and how to advance projects in a way that improves a community-level outcome. The research will be uniquely Saskatchewan-specific and done in partnership with stakeholders and landowners.
One challenge has been coming up with a document that integrates quite different situations across the province.
“That was one of our key focuses in designing this particular policy was, how do you design a policy that can kind of consider those regional differences?” Tendler said. “We don’t want a ‘one size fits all’ approach, we want something that’s tailored to each particular area of the province. The policy can be adaptive and flexible by those regions.”
Through this regional approach, a baseline wetlands retention goal of 40 per cent (and up to 60 per cent where required) was set to protect important water sources.
The policy came into effect on Jan. 30 for all projects that have yet to enter the drainage approval process. After Jan. 1, 2026, all projects will be required to retain
