BONNYVILLE – The first round of engagement for the Beaver River Integrated Watershed Management Plan has wrapped up.
The Lakeland Industry and Community Association (LICA) hosted six information sessions and invited residents to participate. The event May 17 was meant to inform attendees on what the plan was and to allow them to ask questions and provide feedback.
Sandi Riemersma, the consultant hired to facilitate the planning process and draft the Beaver River Watershed Management Plan, stressed the importance of having as many different people, organizations, and groups involved as possible to ensure “relevancy, long-term viability, and collaborative implementation of the plan.”
“The first step (in creating the plan) is to build partnerships, so it takes everybody in the watershed to contribute to an effective watershed plan,” she detailed.
The next step is to characterize the watershed, which consists of compiling and assessing supporting research report knowledge to understand all the issues within the area. Setting goals and objectives to assess the problems, along with identifying indicator targets and thresholds to measure the conditions and support the evaluation of achieving goals.
“A key part of the planning process is to develop an implementation strategy so that we don’t want this plan to be something that sits on the shelf,” noted Riemersma. “We want to make sure that what we prepare is going to be used and implemented into the long-term.”
The plan will provide broad guidance for watershed management and will set clear direction “that will result in consistent, specific actions for integrated management of land and water resources to support long-term watershed health,” Riemersma explained.
Background on the Beaver River watershed
The Beaver River watershed spans about 50,000 square kilometres in Alberta and shares a boundary with Saskatchewan.
Riemersma noted the watershed has some unique features when compared to others in the province.
“The 2,000 lakes are amazing,” she expressed. “I’m a bit south of you... but we could only dream of those beautiful and natural lakes.”
The watershed offers an abundance of habitat for a variety of fish and wildlife and is also rich in natural resources such as oil and gas, forestry, agriculture, mining activity, and commercial fishing.
“Because of these unique characteristics, communities thrive in the watershed, including the Town of Bonnyville, City of Cold Lake, four First Nations communities, whose traditional lands span the majority of the basin, and four Métis Settlements,” Riemersma noted.
With all of the activity that happens in the watershed, Riemersma said, “Planning collaboratively at the watershed scale will help to minimize the growing risk of accumulative impacts of human activity on watershed resources.”
This isn’t the first planning initiative of its kind, however, most of the previous plans focused on one specific area in the watershed.
Riemersma said, and the one LICA is presenting would be broader and won’t replace any of the existing research already done.
“This Beaver River plan that we’re presenting now, with the help of LICA’s development and collaboratively with all of our partners, will seek to include all of the watershed boundaries of the Beaver River.”
Riemersma explained that while these management plans aren’t legally binding, the Government of Alberta considers them in their decision making and in regional planning.
Identifying issues within the watershed
There have been a few problem areas identified in the Beaver River watershed in previous studies.
For example, a 2013 Beaver River State of the Watershed report found that of the 51 lakes that were being monitored 26 showed signs of declining water levels.
“When you compare that to 2020, lake water levels have shown increasing trends to the point where flooding has been a concern in some lakes. Of the 51 lakes that were being monitored, only four were declining in 2020 and 20 were increasing in water levels,” detailed Riemersma.
Water quantity, which pertains to surface water and groundwater, may be influenced by the weather, climate change, surface water-groundwater interactions, and human activity.
According to the Beaver River State of the Watershed Report, the largest percentage of water was allocated for activities such as flood control, lake stabilization, and wildlife enhancement projects. The second highest allocation was for municipal use, followed by industrial and commercial purposes.
The Beaver River has seen a decrease in ions like salt, but an increase in PH and particulates in the water called Total Suspended Solids, which Riemersma said were very important.
“They move through systems. They can cover up fish spawning grounds and they can also house different pathogens and they can impact water treatment processes by shielding some of those pathogens from water treatment like chlorination and UV radiation. They protect those things. They can also create wear and tear if you’re an irrigator along the river at all.”
Surface lake water quality is influenced by weather variability and climate change, surrounding land use, stormwater and treated effluent discharges, and internal ecosystem processes.
“There’s a concern that water quality doesn’t meet guidelines and objectives that can support all of the desired end uses in some areas within the watershed,” explained Riemersma. “Those desired end uses include things like drinking water, contact recreation, agriculture, and also point source pollutants include nutrient sediments bacteria.”
Riemersma continued to say that there’s also a concern for the influx of nutrients that originate from external and internal sources and the natural cycling of nutrients that can contribute to eutrophication in many lakes within the watershed.
The health of the riparian areas was another issue in the Beaver River. Riemersma said there were portions of the Beaver River’s riparian areas upstream that were rated poor but other areas downstream were considered healthy.
Other worries raised were fragmented and poor-quality habitat, potential threat of terrestrial and aquatic invasive species in and adjacent to water bodies in the watershed, concern regarding animals and plants that are safe to eat, water availability and quality, an increased risk of drought, fire, and floods, pest management, along with fish, wildlife, and vegetation, among others.
Attendees share their concerns
When asked why they were attending, one resident said they had been living on the Beaver River for 50 years and wanted to ensure others could do the same.
Robert, a member from Cold Lake First Nations, agreed.
“We’re always interested in water and the cleanliness of it because, without water, nobody survives. We take that quite seriously and we want to know that everybody in the neighbourhood in the Beaver River watershed feels that same way. That we need to protect it so that we survive during our lifetime, but then you’ve got to think ahead to those coming behind us and see what kind of water we leave them.”
Attendee Andrea Woods was curious what the causes of the unhealthy areas were.
Riemersma responded, “Some of it’s land use. It can be attributed somewhat to agriculture. We also thought it was interesting that you can see how conditions improved downstream. Upstream, there’s a lower flow condition where sand river comes in from the north to provide more flow that can contribute to healthy riparian areas too. It’s kind of a combination of land use, encroaching from agriculture and other developments along the creek. Then also the stream flows itself.”
Woods added the topic of recreation on lakes such as Moose and Muriel. Ensuring they are safe to use for years to come was also discussed.
Next steps
Now that the engagement sessions have wrapped up, the information gathered will be gone through and the draft of the Beaver River Watershed Management Plan will be done between September and October.
The second draft of the plan will be done between February and March next year, which will include recommendations and an implementation strategy, followed by the final presentation that is slated for some time in September 2022.
