Water security bolsters economic certainty

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Sunny South News

By Cal Braid
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Many of the world’s towns and cities are built adjacent to water, and for good reason. Water is the most valuable resource on earth. Southern Albertans know this, and in spite of our semi-arid climate, we’ve made a successful go of it through wise water practices.

 Irrigation districts like St. Mary, Eastern, Magrath, Raymond, and Bow River grapple with yearly fluctuations in the water supply and strive to maximize its use and conserve it whenever possible. Over time, those districts have improved their systems of storage and delivery that ultimately carry water to the region’s wide expanse of farmland. Rivers, reservoirs, dams, canals, and pipelines all play a role in getting the resource from point A to B.

 The Alberta Irrigation Districts Association (AIDA) has an irrigation infrastructure of 8,000 kilometres of canals and pipelines and 57 water storage reservoirs. The 11 districts belonging to AIDA convey water for food production, livestock, communities, businesses, wildlife and wetlands, and recreation opportunities.

 In a recent interview, David Westwood, general manager of the St. Mary Irrigation District, made a point of linking water security to economic certainty, “If you go to the AIDA website, the most recent study was 2021, but it took all the economic benefits of irrigated agriculture.”

 He said that the study showed that investment in irrigation systems “would be a long term economic win for the province.” And the numbers in the 2021 report bore that out. Annually, irrigated land in Alberta provided $5.4B to Alberta’s total GDP. It provided 46,000 full-time equivalent jobs and $3.2B in direct labour income. Irrigated crop and livestock production generated eight times more revenue per hectare than dry land. Irrigated land in the AIDA districts generated 38 per cent of Alberta’s total livestock sales.

 In 2022, people were released from the seclusion of the pandemic and headed back to work. The provincial government promoted the movement by funding shovel-ready projects to stimulate the economy and Westwood explained that the irrigation districts and their modernization projects took advantage of the opportunity.

 “The idea was to get projects in the ground now, stimulate the economy, and get people back to work. But this will have a long term, multi-generational (effect) of not just the extra productivity that comes from those irrigated acres, but with more secure production being added due to the security of irrigation,” he said of the work across the districts. “What the province was envisioning, and it’s already come to fruition now, is that you would see more additional spin off ag-related value chain processing within the region.”

 Case in point is the large-scale expansion of the McCain plant just east of Coaldale. The project is a significant economic boost for the region that will create 260 new jobs. “The development in Alberta marks our largest global investment in our 65-year history, totalling $600 million, while underscoring our commitment to the future of agriculture and innovation in Canada,” said Max Koeune, president and CEO of McCain Foods, in 2023.

 Westwood said the projects and commitments made by the irrigation districts go a long way towards attracting expansions and new investments. He said he “knows for a fact, because I’ve spoken to the folks” that the announcement of potential new irrigation acres and reservoir projects played a big role in big industry moving into or staying in southern Alberta.

 “The water security of Chin Reservoir expansion was a critical factor in McCain making its decision to expand the plant versus looking at other facilities in North America. Once we announced that this was coming and that there were going to be new irrigated acres, plus this extra security of Chin, that was enough to tip the scales for them to want to invest in doing the plant expansion. So it’s already working,” Westwood said.

 The improvements to the water delivery systems add not only an economic stimulus, but also an environmental stability through water conservation in the region.

Westwood said, “The government knew that if we could generate water savings – and for sure, the pipeline projects do that through the efficiency gains, reduction of seepage, evaporation, and lost water at the end of a system – but also with additional storage, we would be able to irrigate more acres without using any more water, and probably less. That’s the goal.”