The Red Deer River Watershed Alliance (RDRWA) is moving from its integrated planning phase into its state-of-the-river reporting phase to see if its efforts to clean up the river have borne fruit over the last 13 years since the last report was written in 2009.
A significant part of her job over the next three years will be to compile over a decade’s worth of data into such a report, said incoming RDRWA executive director Francine Forrest, a freshwater biologist who has worked for Alberta Environment, Alberta Agriculture and the government of British Columbia in the past.
Forrest grew up in Calgary and was hired by the RDRWA in August of this year. She said there are four roles the Red Deer River Watershed Alliance plays: outreach and education, forum collaboration and convener roles, integrated watershed planning, and state-of-the-watershed reporting.
“So that is our next project – we are going to revisit that (2009) work and report on what is happening (now),” she said.
While the main trunk of the river does not flow into Rocky View County, three tributaries of the Red Deer River do flow into the county from the north: the Rosebud River, which flows in east of Highway 2 and passes near Irricana, Kneehills Creek, which flows in north of Beiseker, and the Little Red Deer River, which flows into northwestern Rocky View County near Madden and Bottrel.
There 15 tributaries altogether sprouting off over the 724 kilometres the Red Deer River flows. In 2009, eight of those tributaries were listed as being in good health and five were listed in poor health, including Kneehills Creek.
In Kneehills Creek’s case, the 2009 RDRWA Red Deer River State of the Watershed Report identified the large number of feedlots located in the subwatershed as a major source of the watershed’s poor health.
The report identified there were over 100 feedlots located within the Kneehills Creek subwatershed at that time, leading to high concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus and fecal coliform bacteria in the creek. According to the report, the combination of feedlot effluents alongside the impacts from “excessive” agricultural run-offs, municipal effluent discharges and urban runoffs in the region had produced “impaired riparian health conditions” in the subwatershed.
The report also noted the complex network of linear development (mostly roads associated with the establishment of 4,027 oil and gas wells in the subwatershed) also had some impact on riparian health and water quality.
The problem of cattle livestock operations in close proximity to open water has produced similar problems in other creeks and rivers in the province, according to Forrest, and continues to be of concern in Kneehills Creek and other tributaries of the Red Deer River.
“We (the RDRWA) continue to promote best management practices,” she said. “We work with partners that include ag fieldmen and landowners just working on best management practices to keep manure from running off into those receiving environments or into the groundwater that recharges surface water, or (sources) we use for drinking water.”
As for the poor state of the riparian area of the creek noted in 2009, Forrest said significant efforts had been undertaken by RDRWA partners to address the issue over the last decade. Ten of the Red Deer River’s 15 tributaries have had ongoing riparian restoration work done, she noted, and regular monitoring of water quality and contaminants in the river had been undertaken by Alberta Environment.
All of that progress shows the RDRWA partners have not been idle since 2009, said Forrest. But the problem is there has been too much data coming in, and the RDRWA hasn’t had the resources to bring it all together and crunch the numbers into a new state-of-the-watershed report yet.
“We have been doing work on how to minimize contaminants running off into those aquatic eco-systems,” she explained. “Now we are going to be revisiting that work and summarizing the data that has been collected over the past five years in the tributaries; monthly data. And then over 10 years in the main stem (of the river). So we are going to be looking over that data temporally and spatially, and finding out how successful our efforts have been.”
The Rosebud River, while listed in “fair” condition in 2009, has experienced many of the same issues Nose Creek has had over the past decade, with major development pressures in the subwatershed.
In 2009, riparian and wetland loss in Rosebud River were listed as poor. Total phosphorus, which is an indicator of agriculture run-off and development pressures, was also poor. Land cover was listed as poor due to the amount of cultivated agricultural land in close proximity to the river leading to drainage problems and other disruptions of the river's natural hydrology.
Forrest said the “robust data set” available to the RDRWA over the last decade will show whether or not increased development pressures in the Rosebud subwatershed have led to further decline once all those numbers are crunched.
“We are seeing in that Highway 2 corridor (with the Rosebud River) there has been some of that development pressure along the corridor,” she confirmed.
Significant pressures listed for the Rosebud River in 2009 included 25 feedlots, increasing urban development, and existing linear development mostly associated with roads leading up to the subwatershed’s 9,838 oil and gas wells of different types.
The Little Red Deer River was also listed in “fair” condition in 2009. The RDRWA report stated that the river had “poor” ratings for wetland loss, linear developments associated with the region’s 1,682 oil wells, and high bacteria counts.
Similar to Kneehills Creek, most of these negative factors in the Little Deer River could be attributed to riparian habitat loss and runoffs from agricultural operations.
Again, Forrest stated, all the existing data on the subwatershed would have to be crunched before RDRWA local partners will know how successful they have been in addressing these concerns.
“Alberta Environment has been collecting monthly data on a range of parameters (for all tributaries in the Red Deer River),” confirmed Forrest. “We will be looking at this range of parameters over different seasons, during floods, during droughts, and just seeing if there are trends over time, improving or not.”
The Red Deer River Watershed Alliance hosted a forum on Oct. 20 to discuss new technologies for testing water quality and the overall state of the riparian work put in by the RDRWA and its partners to date throughout the entire Red Deer River watershed. The forum, entitled “Reconnecting with the Red Deer,” was held at the Ellis Bird Farm located just southeast of Lacombe.
The RDRWA hosts free public forums and events on a semi-regular basis. For more information on these events, to access interactive maps, or to read up on other works the RDRWA undertakes visit rdrwa.ca.
