Water Restrictions Could Be On the Horizon

**MEDICINE HAT **- Water restrictions could be coming to Medicine Hat in the not too distant future.

Recent restrictions put in place in Calgary and Brooks could lead to Medicine Hat announcing water restrictions of their own.

On July 27th, the City of Calgary implemented restriction on city watering. This means the city will curtail watering of public spaces, and moved its drought monitoring status from "normal" to "dry". Though no mandatory watering restrictions have been placed on Calgarians at this point, the city is encouraging residents to curtail their own outdoor use.

In June, the city of Brooks asked residents to voluntarily reduce water usage by 1/3 in response to the EID reporting a significant drop in river level, 6-8 weeks earlier than normal. August 3rd, the SMRID announced a reduction in water allocation to irrigators on their system.

Being downstream from these three entities more than likely will have an impact on Medicine Hat water usage over the coming weeks. Many Hatters have not seen our portion of the South Saskatchewan this consistently low for this length of time. The multi-year drought conditions aren't helping the situation either.

This leads to discussions of water use in general in our community. We are downstream from roughly 1.5 million people and growing. We have one of the largest irrigation areas in Canada that uses large amounts of water prior to it reaching us via the South Saskatchewan, and it is planning to expand. We use that irrigation for very water intensive crops and commodities. The growing of potatoes, sugar beets, corn, beans and the ranching of cattle use immense amounts of water.

This leads to a discussion of should we be using clean drinking water to water our lawns versus raw water or even grey waste water that comes from our homes. Should there be incentives given to hatters that convert their grass lawns to low-water or water-free yards through xeriscaping. Xeriscaping involves using drought tolerant plants that need little watering once they are established.

We have seen flooding and drought levels in the South Saskatchewan in recent years and who knows what next Spring/Summer brings as far as water levels. In either way, maybe there needs to be a much more robust discussion on water resources and water use in our community before other issues out of our control have a real impact on its availability.