Drainage is a topic again being discussed in Saskatchewan.

[farming101]

Sadly some don't understand.
Many times during a natural disaster options are very limited. The best option is often RUN!

[farmaholic]

With drainage, nobody's loss should be because of someone else's intentional gain. It's bad enough real estate(land) is lost but when yards and homes are lost or at risk because of other's drainage is where.....

[farmaholic]

C&Ds talk about the adequate outlet..... but unless you live beside the ocean or maybe a Great Lake, someone is getting the water or it has to run through their property. Ask yourself if the philosophy of the Sask Watershed Authoritie's C&D projects match your idea of drainage. I can honestly say it doesn't match mine. Don't we all just want to get rid of it NOW! I have land that creating C&D works on would be as onerous as the potholes that are there now.... either I work around a pothole or a drainage ditch.... pick my poison.



This is just north of the community I live by. .... we have it alot better than this but sometimes there just isn't anywhere to put the water..... pot hole country. Our land is higher and drier and better drained but not as good quality as this stuff. We have fewer obstacles, is easier to farm, but not as productive(slum of the Ghetto).

[grassfarmer]

Rainfall in Sask the last 15 years has more than doubled.

A lengthy discussion but all based on a lie. Come up with some real evidence backing this bold claim SF3.

If you think you are getting too much rain do something about. How about you seed your lowest land that floods worst to grass this would use up a lot of excess water and hence how much flows off your land onto your neighbours?

[Klause]

Grassy do I have to bring up the ag can maps again?


Consistent 150 to 200% of longterm averages.


Sloughs never had water now do


You can't put grass into 3ft of water.


Notice how many highways have to get built up? Rm of wolverine half the grids are closed because the sloughs got 10 feet deeper and they don't drain.

[grassfarmer]

Grassy do I have to bring up the ag can maps again?

No, just data from a credible source proving that all of Saskatchewan has had double normal precipitation over the last 15 years. On second thoughts - don't waste your time, I know you have better things to do and we all know it was a ridiculous claim.

[bgmb]

I know one thing the more and the faster we get the liquid poison to Hudson bay the better.

[Wheatking]

No, just data from a credible source proving that all of Saskatchewan has had double normal precipitation over the last 15 years. On second thoughts - don't waste your time, I know you have better things to do and we all know it was a ridiculous claim.

So I went on environment Canada's website and got the historical rainfall from 96 to present. I know my methodology might not be bang on but its 12:30AM and I am not doing it over. Anyways I totaled the yearly rainfall for the weather station at Leroy, I did not include snowfall in the precip totals, and looking back I maybe should have but its late and IDGAF anymore.

So anyways the avg rainfall from 1996 to 2005 was 310MM or just over 12 inches. From 2006 to 2016 it was 380MM or 15". So a 20% increase in rainfall over the past decade. The most yearly rain that Leroy has received was 520MM in 15. I know for a fact that other areas have received much more rain, as we where over 30" for 3 years in a row for 10, 11, and 12.

To say that rainfall has doubled over time is a bit of hyperbole(but not far off in some instances), but to say it has not increased substantially is just asinine. The area I used as an example is just on the border of the extremely heavy rainfall areas of the past decade, you go north, east, and south east and the rain fall totals get much worse. Maybe you can total up the numbers for some other RM's in your spare time. Perhaps when you use the whole province as an avg, rainfall hasn't increased that much, but in certain RM's it has increased to the point of disaster.

I guess one way to tell how much ditching is to blame would be to take the avg rainfall increase in % and compare that to the % water volume increase in the lake. It might not be an exact correlation, but if 100% of the rainfall ends up in the lakes from the basin, then maybe drainage does play a part. I would be curious to see what rainfall the quill lakes basin can get in a season and have that equal evaporation of the lakes.

I am not sure if this is urban legend but I thought the quill lakes where looking for water in the mid 90's.

This is a very difficult subject, but this I do know; Our water table is at the surface with every slough and low lying area full of water, so even if we didn't ditch 1" of rain would still equal 1" of runoff.

[bgmb]

I think you are bang on. Actually if you think about it drainage of water in the fall should be beneficial as it would make room for spring water. So really if the water regulators were concerned about spring flooding they would encourage drainage of full potholes in the fall.

[sumdumguy]

C&Ds talk about the adequate outlet..... but unless you live beside the ocean or maybe a Great Lake, someone is getting the water or it has to run through their property. Ask yourself if the philosophy of the Sask Watershed Authoritie's C&D projects match your idea of drainage. I can honestly say it doesn't match mine. Don't we all just want to get rid of it NOW! I have land that creating C&D works on would be as onerous as the potholes that are there now.... either I work around a pothole or a drainage ditch.... pick my poison.


[ATTACH]1289[/ATTACH]
This is just north of the community I live by. .... we have it alot better than this but sometimes there just isn't anywhere to put the water..... pot hole country. Our land is higher and drier and better drained but not as good quality as this stuff. We have fewer obstacles, is easier to farm, but not as productive(slum of the Ghetto).

There's a lot of pot holes on those fields. Is there no way to join them up and drain them? Guess not, if there was a way they would have been drained, to answer my own question. But like Gressfarmer says, there must be something that would grow there and soak up some of those depressions. is alkalinity a problem?

[SASKFARMER3]

Now their is a real good idea. I would love to pump my main sloughs dry every fall and send them down the river then if the snow is huge they fill oh well i have another year with no land but if its a winter like this then i can seed some and get it back in production.

Grass why even comment your so full of shit your not even funny any more.

Excess rain caused this not some fairy sprinkling fairy dust or justin trudeau or magic beans or any other magical thing it was RAIN. You moron.

[dmlfarmer]

I think you are bang on. Actually if you think about it drainage of water in the fall should be beneficial as it would make room for spring water. So really if the water regulators were concerned about spring flooding they would encourage drainage of full potholes in the fall.

bgmb: Your suggestion has a lot of merit, provided all the drainage is controlled so that in the spring the water is released slowly so it does not cause flooding at anytime, anywhere downstream. If the ditches are not controlled on all the potholes, then you have made the problem even worse as now there is no storage of water at all any year, just as if every pothole was full to the brim every year. It is the velocity of the drainage as much as the volume of drainage that results in flooding.

Unfortunately, your solution likely will not work as what farmer is willing to dig a ditch only to then have to spend more money to put in controls in the ditch so he cannot drain the water until there is no risk of flooding downstream, which may be later than his seeding date.