Taber municipal councillors voted 4-3 yesterday to proceed with a controversial plan to turn native prairies into irrigated cropland.
Bylaw 2022 enables the Municipality of Taber to borrow up to $6 million for an irrigation project on roughly 62 square kilometres of municipal-owned grassland prairie.
Dozens of ranchers and other area residents packed the Tabor town office to express concerns over a lack of consultation and transparency.
Daryl Johnson is vice-president of the Vauxhall Stock Grazing Association and is one of 25 ranching families potentially impacted. If the irrigation scheme goes ahead, they could lose their grazing leases for 1,450 hectares of grassland. He’s also one of ten people who spoke at the council meeting, most of whom asked the council to delay making a decision until the public gets the full picture.
Public in the dark
“We only found out about this back in May when we discovered crews taking soil samples. It’s all been kept secret and in closed meetings,” Johnson told TheRockies.Life. “We’re willing to work with the MD but our concern is that if this is allowed to happen it could happen again and again.”
When the Bow River Irrigation District (BRID) pitched the idea of irrigating this parcel of land near the Scope Reservoir with surplus water, the MD of Taber saw an opportunity to raise needed revenue without raising property taxes. Under the proposal Taber and the BRID would share both project costs and revenues, which the MD estimates at between $1.3 million and $2.6 million.
“If we don’t move forward with this project this time, we won’t be leaving just millions on the table – it will be a much higher number,” said Tamara Miyanaga, Reeve of the Municipal District of Taber, in the meeting.
However council is divided on the issue.
Prior to the vote, Deputy Reeve John DeGroot raised concerns about the speed of the process and the hoped-for benefits of the project.
“I would like to see a document that basically says this is a right to this water. We go into this faster than we do when we buy graders for the municipality,” Degroot said. ”I’m concerned with the legal action and I’m concerned with the amount of water that will be available maybe 10 or 20 years down the road.”
Tax recovery lands
However ranchers like Johnson, who face losing their grazing leases, are pushing back hard on this proposal. They’ve held town halls in various communities to raise awareness and say the MD is turning its back on previous commitments to protect the land from crop production and maintain it as native grassland and freerange grazing.
Starting in the 2000s, the Alberta government started transferring tens of thousands of acres of so-called tax recovery lands back to the municipalities. In 2011, Taber was a big winner when it got title to 54,845 acres of grasslands.
At the time, the MD said it would work with existing and new leaseholders “who respect the nature of these lands and their importance locally,” said then-Reeve Brian Brewin in a press release.
“The Municipal District of Taber is committed to ensuring the highest standards of practice with respect to this land including; transparency, accountability and management of the land for the good of the citizens of the Municipal District of Taber as a whole,” Brewin said.
In 2014, the MD of Taber furthered this commitment by adopting Bylaw 1845, the “Prairie Conservation Bylaw.” Its aim was to ensure the “conservation of municipally owned grasslands” “for the benefit of all citizens of the MD.” The bylaw recognized that “prairie grasslands owned by the Municipal District of Taber provides both economic and environmental benefits to the residents of the Municipal District of Taber,” and it “applies to all Grasslands which are owned, controlled or managed by the MD and which are subject to a Grazing Lease Agreement.”
From a dollar and cents perspective, Taber’s irrigation plan makes sense. The MD stands to make more than a million dollars instead of a few thousand in annual revenue from current grazing leaseholders. However the plan goes against the MD’s previous commitments.
Johnson said it’s about more than the bottom line. It’s also about supporting family ranching businesses that don’t require irrigation as well as preserving grassland.
Disappearing grasslands
Native grasslands are important for prairie biodiversity, erosion control, watershed management and sustainable free range ranching. But they are disappearing. The World Wildlife Fund considers the Northern Great Plains, which extend from the central United States to the Canadian prairies,to be a priority for conservation.
Approximately 80 percent of native prairie across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba has already been lost to irrigated farming, development and other uses. Recent proposals for 100,000 hectares of irrigation expansion within the South Saskatchewan River basin could mean more loss of native grasslands, said the Alberta Wilderness Association in a media release.
Johnson told TheRockies.Life that the fight isn’t over.
“These lands were always meant to stay as native grasslands, with the leaseholders maintaining leaseholders rights,” Johnson said. “That was part of the transfer discussion. The leaseholders have always done an excellent job of caring for and maintaining the grasslands. “We want to work with the MD but they don’t seem interested in exploring options.”
Their leases are up for renewal in 2026 and 2027.
Following this week’s vote, Johnson said he and other ranchers and citizens will be meeting to discuss what to do next.
