The impact of climate change on the South Saskatchewan River

“We are going to bounce back and forth between hot and dry and flooding,” Brent Smith, the coordinator for the Environmental Reclamation Program at Medicine Hat College said.

He says climate change is speeding up the rate mountain snowfall melts in June. In July and August, it’s the melting glaciers in the Rocky Mountains that keep the river flowing.

“The problem with climate change is we are drawing down our savings account,” Smith said. “We are seeing more glaciers melt at a faster and faster rate, which means that counter-intuitively, we are seeing higher rates of flow in the South Saskatchewan.”

When the flow is fast, it becomes a flood risk.

But Greg Paxman, superintendent of the Water Treatment Centre in Medicine Hat, says the city is prepared for the quick changes that can happen to the river.

“We do worry about climate change,” Paxman said. “We have flood plans in place, drought plans in place that we review every year to help prepare our staff to deal with those events.”

While floods don’t happen every year, dealing with water turbidity, which is the clarity of a liquid, does.

“If we get lots and lots of rainfall all at once, it’s going to wash soil particles into the river which means we’re going to get more sediment, things that we don’t want to have going in the river,” Smith said. “Which means it’s going to lower water quality.”

It’s something the Water Treatment Plant deals with every June.

“But most years, we are able to deal with that increased turbidity with our normal process,” Paxman said.

While we may not notice the river changes much now, Smith says we will in the future.

When we need water the most, especially in the summer months, it won’t be there because the glaciers have melted.

by Teagan Rasche

The impact of climate change on the South Saskatchewan River

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