[Mr Flyguy]

Originally Posted by Drewski Canuck

Unless you have a chinook blow through and some run off that does not go into the air by evaporation, all winter flows will be from springs and the flow from storage areas like beaver dams, irrigation dams and lakes with year round flow.

So for the Crowsnest to go dry is possible.

If ALL Industrial users took their allotment of the water licences downstream from Fort McMurray, the Athabasca River also would go dry.

So lets look at how to fix the problem, which means trying to capture ground water in the recharge areas to feed the springs all winter long.

Pumping ground water out will hurt the water table eventually. After successive drought years, the water table keeps dropping and the springs run dry. 100 foot water wells can be "dusters" requiring drilling to 200 foot to reach water. That is a declining water table.

Back in the late 2000's the St. Paul area received a record 18 inches or rain one summer. The lakes came up in the fall by 1 inch. Why? The ground had been so dry for so long that all the rain was absorbed into the ground, or the connected aquifers to the lake beds had to be recharged to saturation before the lake level could finally rise.

Only after saturation and recharge of the water table was there going to be any over land run off.

So quit ditching the low spots in the land for convenient farming. Encourage water retention and absorption were possible, even if it means drilling recharge wells.

The low spots are natural recharge areas to the aquifers and these are the eventual springs that give the winter flow to the rivers.

A hard lesson to learn, but perhaps the lesson will finally "sink" in with the local planning authorities in the Counties, and the towns that rely on the water.

But to prove the point, the San Juaquin Valley in California has SUNK as much as 28 feet in elevation because of continued pumping out of the ground water for farming. Las Vegas has dropped 8 feet as well.

Drewski

San Joaquin