Originally published April 18, 2024 at The Narwhal. Read the full story here.

You don’t have to peer very far into the past to see a different landscape in southern Alberta. The area now populated with farms, lush in the heat of the summer, was once mostly parched — drought-prone land with periods of abundance.

First Nations lived with the land for generations, working that abundance and scarcity, following herds of bison which thrived on the resilient grasses of the prairies. 

But settlers arrived and so did irrigation, wetting fields for crops where once there were prairie grasses adapted to an arid climate; home to rattlesnakes, burrowing owls and pronghorn. 

That irrigation consumes vast quantities of water to produce crops ranging from sugar beets and potatoes to alfalfa and canola, dependent on water pouring off the Rocky Mountains in the spring and swelling rivers, human-made reservoirs and canals. 

It’s just one component of a water system being tested beyond its limits after years of diminished precipitation sapped the province’s water storage, dried out its groundwater and left the government scrambling. 

The prospect of a severe drought is all but imminent, despite a dump of snow early this spring. The government announced what it calls the largest water sharing agreements in Alberta’s history on April 19, which it said could help manage the crisis.

But the crisis confronting Alberta isn’t limited to this summer and what it might bring. The province is dependent on a resource that can’t keep pace with its industry and population, particularly as the effects of the climate crisis arrive at alarming speed. 

Tricia Stadnyk, a professor of engineering and geography at the University of Calgary who studies hydrology, says Canada as a whole has ignored what’s coming.

“Oh, it’s Canada, we have so much water we don’t know what to do with it, we’re never going to have drought that’s so severe people have to move or can’t survive or we can’t grow crops,” she says, mimicking the view that massive, widespread water shortage can’t happen here. 

“It’s just unthinkable for Canadians to think about drought at that scale, but the reality is this is the future of the Canadian Prairies.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE NARWHAL.