Farmers, DU at odds over Big Grass Marsh flooding

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Published on Friday, November 20, 2015

By Kira Paterson

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

Sometime in late September or early October, an illegal trench was dug at Big Grass Marsh north of Gladstone. The trench was dug around the control structure that keeps the marsh from draining. 

The control structure was originally put in place in 1939. The land started as a marsh, but it was drained to create farmland. Then ,in the 1930s, the land was no longer productive, so Ducks Unlimited (DU) put in a control structure to restore the marshland. The structure had removable planks in it that allowed the marsh to drain if water levels got too high. 

Rick Andrews of DU said that for a while, there were problems with vandalism to the structure. People had been removing the planks to drain the marsh, and DU had to keep going back to put the planks back in. So, in 1999, DU replaced the structure they had with a fixed crest steel weir that doesn’t allow variable control like the old one. 

Andrews said that when they put in the new structure, they reduced the marsh level by a foot to the minimum water level that could maintain that ecosystem.

Richard Callander, a former municipal councillor in the area, said that since the new control structure was put in place, farmers who have land around the marsh have been experiencing problems with flooding from the water level in the marsh being too high. He said that the Whitemud Watershed has been continually improving their drainage, so more and more water ends up going to Big Grass Marsh and the flooding continues to get worse. 

Andrews said that Manitoba has had quite a few wet years recently, and that also adds to the increase in water level. He said that the marsh can only drain so fast and the control structure has no effect once the level gets higher than the top of the weir. 

Callander said that DU had signed a contract saying that they would address any problems with flooding from the marsh, but they haven’t done anything yet. 

It is suspected that one of the farmers in the area dug the illegal trench, either to draw attention to the fact that the marsh has been flooding their land, or to try and fix the problem themselves.

Callander hopes that maybe DU or Conservation and Water Stewardship will take out the permanent control structure and go back to one with removable planks so that the marsh doesn’t overflow. 

It remains to be seen whether that would be an option for DU. Andrews said that the structure isn’t the main problem, it’s how much water is coming in from the watershed. He said that there are so many factors affecting the water level that a different structure probably wouldn’t do very much.

David Single, the reeve of the Rural Municipality of Westlake-Gladstone, said that the RMs of Westlake-Gladstone, Glenella-Lansdowne and Alonsa are all affected by the flooding. “I’ll say thousands of acres,” he estimated.

Single said that he heard about the trench from local chatter and went to look at it on Oct. 11. He reported it to Ducks Unlimited a couple days later, but they had already heard about it from someone else. The trench was refilled in the beginning of November. 

Single said that after a month of the marsh being drained, the water level only went down about a foot. “It could’ve been left open all winter and it wouldn’t have been drained completely because it’s still coming in at the north end.” He explained that the water level, which is supposed to be 866.5 feet above sea level, is too high to begin with and going down one foot doesn’t make much of a difference. The level is usually higher than the 866.5 feet and Single said that’s why the surrounding land floods. 

Andrews explained that having the water level any lower than it is set at would negatively impact the ecosystem there. He said that the type of system they have there has to be at the level DU is trying to maintain it at or the habitats will be destroyed. 

Single said that he doesn’t support whoever dug the trench and he agrees that it shouldn’t have been done, but he is glad that they got some attention from it. “We, [the municipalities], have been meeting with [DU] for over a year now, and they insist that this 866.5 level is not too high. And we have an agreement with them which says if it floods land beyond the prescribed area, and in the agreement there’s the area set out, they’re supposed to do something about it. Well it is flooding land beyond that and they’re not doing anything,” said Single. “From now on, we’re planning on going to the Minister [of Conservation and Water Stewardship] on this, because this just isn’t working.” They are writing a letter to the Minister to request that the water level in Big Grass Marsh be lowered so that it doesn’t flood.

DU is mainly concerned about fixing the damage that was done by the illegal trench right now. Andrews said that there was an attempt to fill the trench, but it has since washed out and is no longer retaining the water. He said that when one of DU’s hydrologists went to survey the marsh on Nov. 13, the water level was reported to be six inches below the top of the weir, whereas it should be level with the weir. 

Andrews explained that any reduction in the water level is draining the marsh, because it cannot function as a marsh when it’s too low. He said that once the damage is fixed, they will talk to the RMs again to try and work out the disagreement.

Single stressed that the affected municipalities and farmers don’t want to see the marsh drained completely; they just don’t want their farmland flooded. He said that DU has done very little to maintain the marsh since the new structure was put in and they haven’t been paying attention to the water levels.

Andrews said that the marsh is a flat basin, so whenever the water level rises, the marsh spreads out. He said that trying to farm too close to the marsh in the wet years doesn’t work and there’s nothing that DU can do to fix that. He said once a dry cycle comes, the land around the marsh will be farmable again, but due to the nature of the geography, there isn’t really a solution to the problem.