Where the water goes
Sharon McLeay
Times Contributor
With the recent heavy rains, you may see children playing in water running down the gutters of the streets and looking into storm drains wondering where all the water goes.
That question, along with questions about volume, quality, dispersal, and usage are what engineers Randy Boras and David Seelinger from MPE Engineering Ltd. were tasked to do, by a collaboration of municipalities including Wheatland County.
The team came to Wheatland County council on June 17 to discuss the initial stages of a plan to deal with storm water management and solve some of the issues that have troubled municipalities along storm waters’ wake.
“We initiated a regional storm water plan in 2011 that would give more of a regional effort to storm water management. The County of Rocky View, Chestermere, Strathmore, Calgary and Wheatland County were all having issues and problems with it,” said Michael Ziehr, manager of transportation and utilities for Wheatland County. “We coordinated with WID and MPE to explore using the existing canals, but found that using those canals was not an option.”
The team was then tasked to work with partners to develop options that could work and came up with a plan that could be developed over three phases, implementing strategies that would span two, 10 and 25 years. All parties have to sign a mutual endorsement and agreement on initiatives for work to progress.
“It is essential moving forward that all parties are invested in the plan,” said Boras.
The plan considers drainage questions in areas such as the Shepherd area, Eagle Lake, Serviceberry Creek, Hartell Coulee, and Weed Lake. WID is also one of the partners in this complex endeavor. All options will be priced and application considerations for regional infrastructure and non –infrastructure and sub-regional needs will be included in the plan. The plan will also adhere to guidelines set out by other water groups such as the South Saskatchewan Water Basin plan.
Councillor Alice Booth suggested greater volumes of water moving along waterways would cause greater erosion problems and Councillor Don Vander Velde said Weed Lake is stagnant and needed more current flow. There are also issues of algae blooms. Boras said flow rates and erosion would be something the group would look at and deep pools could be created to improve current.
“There is a whole toolbox that can be used to improve runoff,” said Boras.
Some suggestions were:
• educational programs for best practises in both urban and rural areas regarding improving the quality of storm water before it hits treatment plants or water courses
• development of a smaller open canal that would rundown WID right of ways that could divert water in high runoff periods
• diversion of water into Weed Lake and Eagle Lake and increasing the Serviceberry Creek volume capability
• development of four new wetland areas that could be utilized for water diversion
• upgrading riparian areas and terraforming lake edges
“Runoff does deteriorate urban and rural water quality,” said Seelinger. “It will require a lot of new practises to improve that quality.”
As for wetland development, the rising value and demand for urban development has developers filling in wetland to build houses.
“It doesn’t make sense to fill in wetland. The City of Calgary currently has a policy not to develop wetlands,” said Seelinger. “There will be higher requirements on land developers.”
He suggested partners may reconsider development policies to assist storm water goals and initiatives.
As for new wetland sites, Seelinger said, “we haven’t yet said where they would be. It will come down to landowners and if we can come to agreements for the right reasons.”
The first phase includes planning, water modelling and levy calculations, monitoring and research. In order to get started, council was asked to advance the team $50,000 from the storm water drainage reserve funds and to endorse and fund the 2014 Cooperative Storm water Management Initiative (CSMI) regional storm water study. Council approved the recommendation.