For those who do not believe wet is bad.

[Hopperbin]

Those quill lakes have a salt content. I would imagine land under water is ruined for awhile even if some gets drained. what about long lake salinity and down stream. Some tuff decisions to make. Also what good is a berm if wind and 6foot waves come in the Middle of night.

[freewheat]

Forage guy. The wet years started in the fall of 2005. 06 was stupid wet, 07 as well. Then it was half decent 08 and 09 for weather, but the soil was still wrecked from the prior two years. 2010 was the worst, but then that affected "lower" rainfall years of 2011 and 2012 and 2013. Lower rainfall is relative.

So it has not been a solid decade of terrible weather, just 5 years have rained A LOT. The other 5 were still well above average, but were a breather so to speak. The trouble is, the nasty precip years, wrecked the other not so bad years, because of hyper saturated soils, and no crop or poor crops which limited moisture use in the years it rained a bit less.

Hope that helps answer your question.

[freewheat]

Exactly Hopper. The land around the quill lakes, while relatively productive, has some pretty strong salinity readings which are its main limitation for good production. The lakes are very salty, though less now with the fresh water additions.

But once flooded, even if drained, I would bet the land is a wreck forever...

[sumdumguy]

Back to back Canary for a few years and presto!

[fjlip]

All the Dutch WW2 liberation on the news, one soldier's story mentioned the Nazis broke the dykes when retreating and sea water flooded part of Holland then. For sure it was pumped out, wonder how long the soil took to recover from SALTY North Sea waters?

[SASKFARMER3]

Wow and some still can't see even after studies have been released that rain from the sky has been the reason the quills and eastern sask are flooding. Years of excess rain where maybe 14 inches in a Sumer happened and we got 30 to 50. Years of this shit, yet it's farmers draining and making marginal land farmable is less than 1 % of the cause.
When the mighty buffalo roamed the flat land the great spirit came down and sent water from the sky once before some many many many winters have passed. The big water salty lake flood over and run south.
See the quills did flood some 200 years ago.
It's not farmers draining causing this its Mother Nature giving way to many years in a row of excess land that every low area is full and water then naturally has to run some where and it is.
Story over read and you might realize it did happen.

[Partners]

Yes its rain from the sky..But there are some pretty well groomed ditches that are not "Natural" runs sending water to the Quill..Check out north of Watson to Spalding to Naicam as an example..Nothing natural there..Covers many thousands of acres..They should have built berms and not put big culverts and kept it Natural..Easy for anyone to ad water to an already fast flowing ditch.Like most others the system was not designed for the excess we have had the last few yrs..Plus the basin keeps expaning in all directions..

[Hopperbin]

Claiming natural runoff is not really correct. A proper drainage project should be put into place. If it costs 300 dollars per acre so be it.

[Hopperbin]

Claiming natural runoff is not really correct. A proper drainage project should be put into place. If it costs 300 dollars per acre so be it.

[Hopperbin]

Claiming natural runoff is not really correct. A proper drainage project should be put into place. If it costs 300 dollars per acre so be it.