Watershed Health

To increase public awareness the Saskatchewan Watershed authority has begun releasing an annual report card on the state of our watersheds. Using a number of factors each of the provinces watershed receives a grade of healthy, stressed, or impaired. Using this information, local residents can then form watershed groups and begin the task of improving the health of the watershed they live in.   

          So what makes a healthy watershed you ask? Healthy watersheds provide for the capture, storage and safe release of precipitation. They capture precipitation and snow melt and store it for safe, slow release to streams. They also have good vegetative cover to filter sediments and pollutants,  slows high velocity water flows, and increase water infiltration which recharges groundwater aquifers providing high quality water to the rest of the watershed. Land use changes however can disrupt these natural functions of a watershed, causing streams to erode and flood more often, water quality to decline, water treatment costs to rise, and fish communities to collapse.

In March of 2007 SWA released its first State of the Watershed Report, and unfortunately the Quill Lakes Watershed did not do very well. On its first report card, we received an “Impaired” grade, due to specific concerns over riparian health and the high amount of cultivated land associated with our waterways.  

The impaired state of our Quill Lakes is directly linked to decrease in human productivity and shorebird survival.  During an interview with the Advance Gazette in Wynyard, Don Newcombe of the Saskatchewan Watershed authority reported that Big Quill Lake is approximately seven feet higher than it was in 2005.  This drastic increase in water has reduced the shoreline habitat for feeding and nesting shorebirds leaving both their home and food supply underwater. The introduction of so much fresh water into Canada ’s largest saline lake has diluted the salinity from five percent down to two percent.  The increase in water and drop in salinity concentration levels has also posed manufacturing problems for Big Quill Resources who manufacture potassium sulphate, commonly used as a plant fertilizer.

If the Quill Lakes is going to receive a better grade next year we must work at improving the health of this much needed watershed.  For information on forming a watershed group, please visit the Saskatchewan watershed authority website at http://www.swa.ca.  For more information on watersheds, The Quill Lakes, or a tour of the wetlands, please visit the Wadena and District Museum and Nature Centre.

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