A stable supply of water has always been an issue for Walter Suntjens and other farmers in the semi-arid region near Hanna, Alta. An abandoned building near the Suntjens' farm Friday, July 15, 2011.Jeff McIntosh for The Globe and Mail
It takes fortitude to farm in a place called the Dry Belt, where it rains rarely and long droughts are common, where crops fail and grasshoppers thrive.
John Palliser warned against settling in this eastern swath of Alberta. The land was, in the 19th-century explorer's estimation, "forever and comparatively useless" for agriculture.
For a brief time in the early 1900s, it appeared as if he was wrong - an offer of cheap farm land enticed nearly 30,000 pioneers to the region. But the dust storms of the Dirty Thirties revealed the semi-arid grassland's cruel character. Family farms were decimated, schools closed and all 37 municipalities went bankrupt. About 15,000 people fled. Most never came back.
Ever since those devastating days, the Dry Belt has sought to defy nature, but its seven-decade-old quest for a stable supply of water has stalled in controversy at every incarnation.
Now the Alberta government is resurrecting a divisive proposal to take large volumes of water from the Red Deer River near Nevis, a hamlet about 170 kilometres southeast of Edmonton, and divert the resource 120 kilometres through a canal and pipeline to the parched prairie. The government will spend $1-million to start an environmental assessment of the plan. The project's price tag isn't being revealed, but the most recent estimate pegged the cost at $250-million.
The province contends the ambitious water-diversion scheme would drought-proof the Dry Belt and deliver economic stability to a vast southern region nearly four times the size of Prince Edward Island. Additional water would be used in homes and for livestock, to support municipalities and new agri-businesses, to irrigate crops and stabilize 415 kilometres of creeks that run dry many summers.
"Albertans all deserve to have a good, safe supply of domestic water and also have water for agricultural pursuits," said Agriculture Minister Jack Hayden, whose family homestead borders the region now known by its modern-day euphemism, the Special Areas.
"We're talking about maintaining the community and keeping it sustainable."
But where some see hope, others see folly.
Opponents of the plan are already surfacing in what is primed to be the next battle over water in the country's fastest-growing province - and among its driest. If approved, as much 42,300 cubic decameters of water would move annually from one river basin to another, potentially opening a passageway for harmful pathogens and parasites, said University of Alberta professor David Schindler, one of Canada's top water scientists. That's nearly one-third of the water used by the Edmonton region each year.
Water is already scarce throughout southern Alberta. Municipalities such as Okotoks, Rocky View and Strathmore, near Calgary, have all had to search for more supply.
The province, Dr. Schindler argues, needs to rethink where it develops, as 80 per cent of the province's water supply is in the north.
"We keep trying to force development into these areas that we've always known were water-strapped. It makes no sense at all."
BIBLICALLY DRY
The message on cattle rancher Walter Suntjens' voicemail conveys the relief he and other farmers in the Special Areas feel after 15 years of biblically dry conditions and relentless grasshopper infestations.
"Hey, it's wet out here! Can't believe it."
But Mr. Suntjens knows it won't last. His family has ranched in the Dry Belt for a century, too long to be fooled by a good spell of precipitation.
The lack of water here is chronic. Farmers do what they can to squeeze life from the earth - preserving precious rainfall in dugouts, capturing melting snow in the spring - but often, they can barely grow a thing.
Nine years ago was particularly difficult. Grasshoppers devoured nearly all of Mr. Suntjens' crops, about 4,500 football fields' worth. Mercifully, the insects left the peas, which he fed to his 400 cows, along with hay cut from ditches.
"It was so incredibly dry here," the 60-year-old farmer recalled. "It just took you to your wits' end, trying to make ends meet."
Despite the perennial hardship, agriculture is the backbone of the region. The health of its communities is tied to farming, and without adequate water, many of them are withering. Some villages have shuttered altogether, ghost towns lining desolate highways. The Population remains less than half of what it was before the 1930s.
Cereal is one village fighting for its survival. About 126 people lived there in 2006, a decline of one-third from the previous census. One by one, it lost the grain elevator, the hospital, the grocery store and the school. For Cereal, and dozens of communities like it, water could mean an economic rebirth.
"If water does go through, it would be a good thing for everybody," said Allen Buettner, Cereal's mayor. "Maybe we'd even get some business … create some jobs and get some industry out here.
"We sure need it."
SOUTHERN CHARM
Those who tough it out in the Special Areas have long looked south with envy.
Irrigation has worked economic wonders in this equally dry swath of Alberta, which explorer John Palliser warned about, too. Almost every year, massive amounts of water are withdrawn from rivers and transported through more than 8,000 kilometres of canals and pipelines to moisten the semi-arid prairie, turning fields around Medicine Hat and Lethbridge into some of the most productive agricultural land on the planet.
The practice is water intensive and has always been the most contentious element of the Special Areas proposal. In the project's latest version, irrigation has been downsized to 3,240 hectares (eight times the size of Vancouver's Stanley Park) from 8,000 hectares in 2006, the last time the project was on the public radar.
Few other details are being released for now. Alberta cabinet ministers have approved the project in principle, but there are no guarantees. The province is preparing a plan for public consultation, a process that could take up to three years.
The government has a significant stake in the Special Areas. It took over responsibility for the financially ruined district in 1938.
Red Deer, the largest nearby community, has in the past been one of the project's most vocal opponents. The river that cuts through the province's third-largest city is the only system in southern Alberta still open to new requests for water. Others, such as the Bow and Oldman rivers, have reached their limits.
As a result, the Red Deer River has become a target. In 2007, local politicians and business leaders beat back a plan to withdraw water for a megamall and proposed horse racetrack near Calgary. The Special Areas Water Supply Project could face similar opposition.
Longtime Red Deer Mayor Morris Flewwelling said he'd support the water-diversion plan, but only if irrigation is dropped entirely. The Red Deer Chamber of Commerce is waiting for more information before outlining its stance, but the business group has reservations.
"It's not that we want to hoard the water for ourselves. We all live in the same province," said Danielle Klooster, the chamber's policy manager. "However, you got to look at the highest and best use of land. If they've been struggling for decades to get water out to those areas, is that really the best use of the land, to put major livestock operations out there?"
Against the odds, generations of farmers have nonetheless eked out a living in the Dry Belt. It just hasn't been easy. The grass is good for grazing and it grows well - when there's water.
Like many here, Mr. Suntjens believes a reliable supply is desperately needed. He's glad the province is resurrecting the project, but he thinks other solutions should be explored.
"We have to solve this problem," Mr. Suntjens said after a long day of herding cattle.
"We have to solve our water problem permanently."