Chapter 1: Old Water

Understanding the Rafferty-Alameda issue requires an appreciation of the prairie condition, the physical factors that define the essence of this part of Canada. The elements have a profound and lasting impression on the people who live on the prairies. The vagaries of the weather as well as the geographic isolation have helped to create a province with a sparse and declining population and a sense of politcal disenfranchisement.

The factors have influenced how prairie-dwellers look at the world, and they provide the filters though which they view the Souris River and the Rafferty and Alameda dams. When all the rhetoric and the hyperbole are stripped away, any analysis of the Rafferty-Alameda issue must begin with the century-long struggle waged by those who have been most adversely affected by its flows: the residents of the Saskatchewan portion of the Souris River basin.

In Saskatchewan, it is impossible to drive down any rural road and not be struck by how recent the history of the province is. In virtually every field are monuments to a way of life once lived: piles of rocks picked by hand, abandoned farm machinery once pulled by horses, rusted hulks of 1930's-vintage automobiles, old wooden granaries, weather-beaten and deserted homes. In the small towns the struggle against harsh economic forces is evident in the shuttered stores and the abandoned gas stations. Unpaved roads predominate. Most roads that are paved have their interminable straightness interrupted every dozen kilometers or so by another town. Large stretches occur where towns have disappeared altogether. In many areas, the distance between towns is still a function of the water storage capacity of steam-powered locomotives, or the speed of horse-drawn wagon loaded with grain traveling from the farm and back in a day. Many people in Saskatchewan can still remember the anxieties of using a chamber pot in the middle of winter, and the excitement when electricity first came to the farm.

I vividly recall my first trip outside Regina after I had moved to the province from Ontario in 1981. Driving through towns of less than 500 people - Krounau, Lajord, Sedley - I was surprised at the rectangular facades of abandoned buildings that I had previously seen only in television westerns. I remember thinking I had moved to a place that was, at best, thirty years behind the times and, at worst, somewhere near the end of the earth. What did these people, living out in the middle of nowhere, do? It took me six years, but I eventually found the answer. What they do is live frugally and honestly in close cooperation with their neighbors, their lives shaped by their closeness to the land and the elements.

The predominating unit of time in Saskatchewan is not the minute or the hour, or even the day, but the season: seeding in spring, harvest in fall. These annual rites occur according to the schedule set by nature, and they influence the pace of life of the entire province. The weather is a universal preoccupation because it influences the economic fortunes of everyone who live here. More than any other natural factor, rain - at the right time and in the right amount - is the key to economic prosperity. Certainly, temperature, snow, and hail are important factors as well, but the ubiquitous source of concern is rain. To much, too soon, too little, too late: all have their consequences.

In many respects a year in the life of the province can be divided in two: farming and everything else. Significant public events are generally not scheduled during seeding or harvest. Ironically, the first litigation on the Rafferty-Alameda project involved the propriety of an environmental panel holding public meetings during the harvest months of August and September, which are among the busiest times of the year for farmers and ranchers in the province.⁽¹⁾

Some people might argue this way of life is backward. In 1992, after I came to Queen's University to write this book, I was asked by someone from Ontario who should have known better how it felt to be back in civilization. I bristled at the insensitivity. After some thought I concluded that whatever else life in Saskatchewan may be, it is not uncivilized. It is basic and often elemental, but it is this proximity to the elements and their influence that gives the province and its people their distinctiveness.

In many respects, Saskatchewan is the quintessential Canadian province. Its predominant image is still formed from the elements and from the relationship of its people to the land, the sky, and the water. I suspect this is why the province has produced more than its share of writers and artists who have gone on to national and international success interpreting the physical images of the country to others.

All these images combine to leave an indelible impression on me of what Saskatchewan is. It is an image I hated when I first moved to the province. I remember the acute pangs of homesickness I felt one day, sitting on the outskirts of Regina and gazing at the interminable flatness of it all. I still recall my amazement at the discovery that couldn't drive in any one direction in Regina for fifteen minutes without hitting bald prairie. I was living on a prairie island.

In the six year I spent working on Rafferty-Alameda I came first to appreciate, and then love, the beauty of the prairies, in particular its people and what the land does to them; for it makes them more humane than they would be in almost any other part of the country. As I have discovered since I left, these feelings are not unique. Others share them, including Peter Gzowski, who spent some time in Saskatchewan working for the Moose Jaw Times-Herald:

But it is the land that has stayed with me, the land and its hold on life. In the next decade, when the CCF -the NDP, as it had become-finally fell, Maclean's sent me back to Saskatchewan to try and find some patterns. The most Canadian of provinces, as I called it then, and thought that phrase may have been too glib, I know now what it meant - a place where people tried to hold together in a harsh climate, and weave a social fabric in answer to their common needs.⁽²⁾

This is the crucial premise for any discussion of the Rafferty-Alameda issue. If one is to understand the project and the controversy it generated, one must understand the historical forces that combined to create it. In Saskatchewan, there is no more critical factor than water.

Weather on the prairies occurs in cycles, the most significant (that we know about) being those that are decades long.⁽³⁾ The droughts of the thirties and the eighties are two of the most recent and prominent examples, but they are by no means the only ones. During the nineteenth century, two expeditions exploring the Canadian west reached radically different conclusions about climatic conditions in the region. In 1857 Captain John Palliser described a significant portions of southern Saskatchewan - some twenty million hectares, now known as Palliser's Triangle - as being too dry to support farming. As one historian has noted, Palliser was "not altogether wrong in some of his observations made in what was probably a period of drought."⁽⁴⁾ Beginning in 1872 and continuing over the next decade, John Macoun, a naturalist, toured the same region but, unlike Palliser, concluded that "the prairie was fertile, that the seasonal distribution of rainfall rather than the total amount was significant, and that the soil once broken would produce good crops."⁽⁵⁾

Both Palliser and Macoun were astute observers, and there can be no doubt that they each kept accurate records. The discrepancy in their accounts provides the first reliable historical record of the climatic differences that affect this area. Such swings in the weather have left their mark on the province and its inhabitants. Edward McCourt wrote of the drought of the 1930's that

the rains fell at last and the erstwhile desert rejoiced and blossomed like the rose; but no amount of rainfall could ever wash away dreadful memories of the agonizing struggle to survive. For the people of Saskatchewan that nine year sojourn in a dust-darkened wilderness was a genuinely traumatic experience which left its mark not only on those who actually lived through the Dirty Thirties, but to some degree on their descendants.⁽⁶⁾

The images are as powerful today as they were sixty years ago. Black-and-white photographs from the 1930s reveal what at first glance appears to be snow drifting in ditches and against fences, but on closer examination turns out to be topsoil. There are countless stories of people jamming wet rags into doorjambs and windowframes in a vain effort to keep out the blowing dust. A common joke concerns the Saskatchewan farmer who, during the thirties, goes out to cultivate his land, and heads to Manitoba to find his topsoil.

In addition to the challenges imposed by the weather, the sheer physical expanse of the prairies presented its own constraints. The province would not have been settled as widely or as early as it was were it not for the construction of dams to provide water storage. The locomotives of the Canadian Pacific Railway could not have made it across the prairies were it not for the water supplied by reservoirs on many Saskatchewan streams.

To this day, the reality for residents of rural and urban Saskatchewan is one of managing water. Without the ability to manage their uncertain water supply, they could not live where they do. Reservoirs are common in cities, towns, and villages across the prairies. On farms an excavated pond, or dugout, is often a necessity for survival. Rivers here differ from rivers in other parts of the country in that their flows vary widely from season to season and year to year. These conditions have long been accepted by those who reside on the great plains, and it has resulted in their having a unique perspective on water:

In the West, lack of water is the central fact of existence and a whole culture and set of values have grown up around it. In the East, to "waste" water is to consume it needlessly or excessively. In the West, to "waste" water is to not consume it- to let it flow unimpeded and undiverted down rivers. To easterners, "conservation" of water usually means protecting rivers from development; in the West, it means building dams.⁽⁷⁾

The distinction has great significance for the Raffert-Alameda project, which was was viewed differently in the various parts of the country largely on the basis of the public's varying image of water. On the prairies, there had long been a consensus regarding water conservation. It is what led Norman Ward, the distinguished Saskatchewan political scientist, to conclude, "the need for water on the prairies is a subject about which there can be little serious disagreement."⁽⁸⁾ As will become apparent, the same views are not held elsewhere in Canada.

The drought of the thirties and the magnitude of the effort required to ease its effect meant that government action was necessary. Provincial governments on the prairies, suffering their own financial difficulties, had limited resources. Responsibility thus fell on the federal government, which formed the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration. The PFRA constructed many of the larger impoundments on rivers and streams throughout the prairies. These structures helped see communities throughout the drought. The paradox is that periods of drought are often supplanted by periods of dangerous flooding; there is either too little water or too much.

This fact is crucial to any rational understanding of the issues around the Rafferty-Alameda project. An appreciation of the area is also necessary. Far from being a pristine country, untouched by human hands- a view put forward by several opponents of the project- this area, like the rest of the grain belt, is one of the most physically altered landscapes on the planet. Since it was first settled, the land has been heavily cultivated. As the melt-water channel for glacial Lake Souris, the land on either side of the Souris River valley is characterized by an absence of topsoil and a preponderance of stones and rocks. Geographers estimate that glacial Lake Souris drained in eight or nine days approximately 11,700 to 11,300 years ago, likely at the rate of 100,000 cubic meters per second - a far cry from the placid creeks that flow through the valleys now. The contemporary evidence of such large flows can be seen from current land concentrations two kilometer wide on the adjoining margins.⁽⁹⁾

Largely devoid of trees, the landscape is lacking in natural beauty. It is strewn with pump jacks, pipelines, and storage tanks- oil field facilities developed at a time when concern for the environment or aesthetics was minimal. Mounds of spoil material from the coal strip mines surrounding the city of Estevan give the impression of a lunar landscape. Nearby, two thermal-electric generating stations billow out smoke, frequently shrouding the city in an acidic haze.

The farms near Estevan are dotted with piles of rocks that stand as testimony to the never-ending price farmers seem willing to pay for the privilege of growing cereal crops in this unforgiving environment. Many farmers to this day are forced to pick rocks that are brought to the surface by the spring thaw and cultivation. Area resident Edgar Sawyer recounts the difficulties:

...it just seemed like you could pick and pick and pick, and then look back... you know, if you could see that you had accomplished something, but you haven't. There's just as many stones out there. But we used to pick in the spring and in the fall, we used to pick stones with a team and wagon... if you pick five or six loads of stone in a day, well you think you're done and, "Well, where did we pick them stones?" God, it was awful. And some people just bounced over them. Hard on machinery. Wasn't so bad with horses, you know. They would slow down. But on the tractor, you'd get some awful jolts.⁽¹⁰⁾

Touring the southeastern portion of the province, in particular the area adjacent to the Rafferty Reservoir, the inescapable conclusion is that nature did not treat the area kindly. What limited beauty was bestowed upon it, humankind has done its best to disfigure through agriculture, coal mining, and oil and gas extraction.

The Souris River system in Saskatchewan is comprised of three principal tributaries: Long Creek, situated west of the main stem of the Souris River and adjacent to the Missouri Coteau, the Souris River itself, and Moose Mountain Creek, which flows south from Moose Mountain to join the Souris near the appropriately named town of Oxbow, sixty kilometers east of Estevan. Long Creek already has one major impoundment on it: the Boundary Reservoir south of Estevan. Long Creek already has one major impoundment on it: the Boundary Reservoir south of Estevan is the source of cooling water for the coal-fired Boundary Dam Power Station, which provideds approximately 50 percent of the base load capacity for the province.

The main stem of the Souris River has its origin in the middle of the prairie northwest of the city of Weyburn, approximately eighty kilometers southeast of Regina. Above Weyburn, the river is characterized by low banks and a poorly defined valley. Below Weyburn, the valley becomes more defined, with a slightly steeper slope. The Souris has an average fall of 0.3 meters per kilometer. The valley is shallow and flat, and the normal flow velocity or the river is slow. Wide, sweeping meanders, and the fact that the region as a whole only receives about forty centimeters of precipitation annually add to its lethargy. Close to Weyburn, above the upper reaches of the Rafferty Reservoir, there is a ribbon of light brush and scrub, but the majority of the eighty-kilometer reach of the river from Weyburn to Estevan is largely devoid of trees.

On any trip down the valley one would see evidence of past efforts to control the river. Levees, weirs, dikes, and dams are prevalent along the valley between Weyburn and Estevan. As a means of irrigating his hay land, one farmer near Estevan annually constructed a two-meter-high earth embankment, over one-half kilometer in length, across the entire Souris River valley, temporarily halting the spring runoff.⁽¹¹⁾ The impoundment behind this structure stretched for kilometers up the valley, and to his neighbors who were affected by it he would complain about "those damn beavers" again.

Downstream for Estevan, the Souris changes in both direction and character, flowing east, parallel to the international boundary, with more dense tree cover along the banks. The valley of Mountain Creek, which joins the Souris just west of the town of Oxbow, is considerably deeper than that of the Souris valley at Rafferty and is more clearly defined, particularly in the area inundated by the Alameda Reservoir. The land to Moose Mountain Creek valley has a greater concentration of trees and a higher quality of topsoil than that surrounding the Souris above Estevan. Below the confluence of Moose Mountain Creek, the Souris valley is heavily treed right down where it crosses the forty-ninth parallel.

The valley upstream of the city of Minot, North Dakota, was described in 1853 by Isaac Stevens:

Its valley is from half a mile to a mile wide, about 200 feet below the prairie level, and it is well wooded with maple, oak, ash and elm. The deep coulees run back from it for fifteen or twenty miles, and must be avoided by keeping far from the river itself.⁽¹²⁾

This portion of the valley was home to the largest reservoir on the Souris prior to the construction of the Rafferty and Alameda dams (Lake Darling). Below Lake Darling, Minot straddles the valley, with many buildings located in the flood plain. In 1969, religious parallels were drawn as the flooding Souris (referred to as the Mouse in the U.S.) bisected the city for forty days. This flood gained almost mythical status for the residents of Minot, leading to prolonged demands for flood protection.

Turning east and then north, the river and the valley maintain the same basic characteristics until they reach the town of Verendrye, North Dakota, where the benches disappear and merge with the valley. Near the border with Manitoba, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operates a number of low-level dams and weirs, creating wetlands for the propagation of waterfowl. In Manitoba, the valley becomes progressively steeper until reaches the confluence with the Assiniboine River below the town of Wawanesa. Throughout its course, the river is placid. In 1880, however, coal from Estevan was transported by barge down the Souris and Assiniboine rivers to Winnipeg. During this expedition, which almost certainly took place during spring runoff, "turbulent rapids" were encountered near Souris, Manitoba.⁽¹³⁾

The Souris is entirely dependent on precipitation. Unlike other rivers on the plains, such as the Saskatchewan and the nearby Missouri, it is not fed by mountain runoff. The Souris has highly variable flows from season to season and from year to year. Generally the river is high during the spring runoff, as approximately 80 percent of its flows are derived from snow melt. Occasional floods occur in late spring and early summer as a result of rains. Flows normally diminish to zero or near zero in the fall and winter. Despite the droughts of the thirties and the eighties, significant floods on the Souris occurred in 1882, 1904, 1949, 1956, 1960, 1975, 1976, and 1979, causing millions of dollars in agricultural and property damage not only in Saskatchewan but downstream in North Dakota and Manitoba. On average, the Souris River in Saskatchewan sustains significant floods two out of every ten years. In the remaining years, evaporation generally exceeds precipitation. Consequently, the Souris River basin is among the most water-scarce regions of Saskatchewan, with little water-based recreation, few irrigation projects, and frequent municipal water shortages.⁽¹⁴⁾

That few people understood the nature of the region's rivers was driven home to me in conversation with my sister, who resides outside Toronto. Learning of my involvement in a project of growing national controversy, she inquired, "Just how big is this river, anyway?" My response was, "It depends." During spring runoff in the Souris near Estevan can be a kilometer wide and three meters deep. At other times there is no water in it at all. In disbelief, my sister asked, "How can that be?" She was not alone. When we took people on tours of the project at the height of the controversy, their inevitable response was, "You mean, this is it?" But unless they saw the river in both incarnations, it was difficult to believe. It also rendered the already difficult task of explaining the project virtually impossible.

The widely varying flows of the Souris have led to major problems for those who inhabit the region. Without exception, there was too much water or not enough. Grant Devine, never shy about speaking in a homespun tenor to a Saskatchewan audience, captured the essence of the river when he referred to it as "either mud or flood."

The voices of the people can best tell the story of life beside this most unpredictable river. When they are heard in chorus, they tell of common hardships resulting from periods of flood and drought, and the very human and simple desire to make something better of their world:

In 1930-31 the river ... was so dry, we even planted potatoes and barley in the river botto, ... The river itself was the problem. The unpredictable flow of the river seemed to get worse. It seems it was either flooding or drought, with seldom a good year in between. In 1953 we had over twenty inches of rain in June. The river overflowed its banks for many miles and stayed that way throughout the summer.⁽¹⁵⁾

Jack Muirhead, area rancher

... I have argued that it has been drier these last few years in this country that it ever was in the thirties. Because in the thirties ... all down it the flats around there, there was stock running. And you was riding a saddle horse pretty near belly deep in the snow. Well that snow all melted and ran ito the river. And you haven't had such a thing for the last six years. No snow around here at all ... The only thing we haven't had that we had in the thirties is wind⁽¹⁶⁾

Gerald Pick, area farmer

The history of the Souris is clear: residents have believed for many years that the river was in desperate need of management. The fact that there are forty dams on the system, ten of which are in Saskatchewan, confirms this. The magnitude of the water management problem, however, was such that any long-term solution was beyond the means of local interests. This was recognized as early as the 1940's.

You see, in the thirties, the late thirties, they came in and they built those dykes. And they built Midale Dam, and there was a big scheme to irrigate-flood irrigate. And it never worked, because in 1943, the first time they ever got any water, they washed the dam out. Yeah, '43 was big flood. They had a hell of a storm here in March. But they repaired the dam afterwards, and '48 - another big year, another big flood - it was washed the dam out again... So they repaired it again, and they dug the spillway down, so the blamed thing doesn't hold water anymore. The dam was supposed to back water up to where Mainprize Park is, I suppose.⁽¹⁷⁾

Jack Muirhead

Area residents obviously believed that, to the extent possible, the elements should be controlled for the betterment of humankind. This attitude was common among farmers who felt little compunction about filling in potholes or removing trees to increase their cultivable acres. This same attitude was applied to the Souris. It was there to be managed. But the cycles of flooding were far enough apart - ten to fifteen years between the peaks and valleys of flood and drought - that it must have been difficult to mount a sustained campaign to solve problems the river presented.

One of the first recorded calls for water management in the Souris basic came from the town of Alameda in 1907.⁽¹⁸⁾ A large dam immediately above Estevan was called for in 1932, when the Minot Daily News reported that interests on both sides of the international border were considering cooperative construction of a dam on the main stem of the Souris River near Estevan:

Construction of a huge dam in the Souris (Mouse) River near Estevan, Sask., would assure a steady, even flow of water in the stream thru [sic] Minot, thus solving a sewage problem which exists, and would reduce the flood hazard here to a minimum, was the assertion of members of an Estevan delegation which came to Minot late yesterday...

President A.J.H. Bratsberg of the Minot city commission, who presided at the dinner meeting, sketched the history of the flood relief work in Minot, and told of the progress that has been made. He assured the Estevan delegation of Minot's interest in the proposal and promised them a full and complete study will be made ...

[Minot] City Commissioner Thomas said that he and City Engineer Peterson had studied the engineering plans laid before them by the Estevan delegation and that from a hurried checking of them, he believed the conclusions as to the amount of water that would be held back were correct.⁽¹⁹⁾

In spite of these early Canadian calls for water management, no significant effort appears to have been made until 1940. This prolonged period of waiting must have been difficult for Saskatchewan and Manitoba residents of the basin to accept, given two factors: the devastating effects of the drought of the 1930's, and that, just a few kilometers to the south, their American neighbors had gone ahead with an ambitious and successful multiple-dam program on the Souris.

The International Joint Commission (IJC) conducted its first formal transboudary review of the Souris River in 1940. As a bilateral tribunal with no decision-making powers of its own, the IJC historically has acted as a fact-finding and recommendation-making body to the governments of Canada and the United States. In 1940, the IJC met in an attempt to establish an apportionment of the Souris River waters between Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and Manitoba. Representatives of the Saskatchewan government proposed a comparatively small amount of water that could be fully utilized. Dams would be required, and impoundments were proposed in Saskatchewan to help alleviate both the effects of drought and of flooding.⁽²⁰⁾ In 1940, though, the federal government and the IJC played a far more prominent role in the development of a province's water resources than it could in the 1980s. This is evident in the remarks of the counsel for the Canadian government before the IJC:

...due to war conditions, it had become necessary to curtail the activities of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act [sic] (PFRA) organization and to divert the available funds and engineering staff to an entirely different government purpose. When the present situation had disappeared, he said, the policy of completely utilizing the equitable portion of the Souris River within the Provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba would be resumed by the Dominion and the two provinces.⁽²¹⁾

In appearing before the 1940 IJC hearings on the Souris River, J. Clark Salyer, chief of wildlife refuges for the United States Biological Survey, noted the conditions in the basin and the rationale for the construction of water storage facilities on the Souris on the American side during the 1930s:

It was apparent that the storage was to be one of the most important features of the project. Our experience during the drought years taught us that if we wanted continued protection we would have to store during the wet years in order to keep going during the dry years. A study of the stream flow records seem to prove that we could have a successful project here on a major scale. So we purchased the land, made our surveys, built the storage dam and the adjoining dams across the valley to make irrigation marshes for waterfowl and to protect our expenditure of some three million dollars to secure adequate protection of our water supply and our water rights.⁽²²⁾

Salyer's views indicated that the Americans felt they had sufficiently hydrologic data, even in the midst of the drought of the 1930s, to justify the construction of a series of dams on the Souris River. Similar conclusions were reached by municipal officials from Estevan and Minot in 1932. The IJC, however, reached a much different conclusion about the Souris in 1940 when it examined the question of apportionment. The commission noted the difficulty of its task because of the highly variable flow and the inadequacy of the flow records:

So far as the records go, and they are very inadequate, the mean monthly discharge in second-feet as measured at Minot, North Dakota, has varied from 1.3 in 1937, 1.3 in 1931, 7.8 in 1932, and 8.7 in 1935, to 324.4 in 1923, 339.7 in 1916, and 434.5 in 1927, the total acre-feet for the same years running from 939 and 940 and 5,605 and 6,410 acre-feet to 235,958 and 247,129 and 315,600 acre-feet.⁽²³⁾

The commission also noted the obvious jurisdictional complexity, and that there were widely varying interests vying for use of the water throughout the basin. Since the area had recently been subjected to drought, competing claims for use of the water were intense, and contributed significantly to the commission's hesitancy in establishing a permanent apportionment. This is not question, however, that the commission understood both the problems posed by the variablility in flow and the most practical solutions available. In its report, the commission acknowledged that the North Dakota reservoirs on the Souris were

...valuable as long range means of regulating the flow on this unusually variable stream. Without this means of conserving water all these interests would suffer in periods of natural low water flow, and it would not be possible to release water to Manitoba even to the limited extent needed for human consumption and stock watering.⁽²⁴⁾

The commission did not recommend the establishment of a permanent apportionment for the Souris, citing inadequate stream flow data as the reason. In making this recommendation to the Canadian and American governments, the commission deemed it advisable to continue the investigation for such period of time as seemed necessary. It also suggested the establishment of a joint Canada-US body of engineers to administer the interim measures it was recommending, measures that were accepted by the respective federal governments.

This acceptance had the effect of short-changing Canadian interests. Saskatchewan was permitted to continue its current use of the waters of the Souris River, which, compared to the capacity the United States had with its twenty-one dams, was comparatively small. Permission to construct a small capacity reservoir at Weyburn did not add significantly to Saskatchewan's storage capacity. North Dakota, on the other hand, was permitted not only to continue its current use of the Souris but to construct a 200 acre-foot capacity reservoir on one of its tributaries. While the latter was of no significant advantage to American interests, the maintenance of the status quo in terms of existing use certainly was. It constituted a tremendous advantage in favor of the existing use certainly was. It constituted a tremendous advantage in favor of the United States since, in 1940, the entire reservoir capacity in the Saskatchewan portion of the Souris basin totaled only 17,000 acre-feet, or 7.5 percent of the total storage south of the border.

Although the Saskatchewan government had made representation to the commission that annual flows in excess of 440,000 acre-feet had been reported, and that Saskatchewan only contemplated storing 36,000, the IJC recommended an additional allocation of only 4,000 acre-feet.⁽²⁵⁾ The commission forecast that five years hence, in 1945, the flow records would be much more dependable and informative. The commission also recommended that if North Dakota and Saskatchewan wanted to construct additional storage facilities, application should be made to the IJC for permission.⁽²⁶⁾ The 1940s and the 1950s were relatively wet years in the Souris basin. In light of such conditions, pressure to establish a permanent apportionment between the three jurisdictions was, no doubt, less acute than if the drought had persisted. The five years envisaged by the IJC for the establishment of a permanent apportionment ended up lasting nineteen years, and even then the solution was not permanent.

The commission met again in the latter half of the 1950's, this time prompted by a request from the government of Saskatchewan for additional water allocation. The province proposed the construction of a dam to create an industrial reservoir to provide cooling water for a thermal-electric generating station on Long Creek near Estevan. The restrictions placed on Saskatchewan's water use by the 1940 apportionment meant that virtually no development requiring a large volume of water had been possible for the better part of two decades. Saskatchewan's frustration was evident from correspondence between the provincial and federal governments in 1957. The Saskatchewan CCF minister of agriculture wrote to the Department of External Affairs:

Development of the Souris River basin in Saskatchewan makes it necessary that this province have the unrestricted use of the water flowing within its boundaries, which the interim measures referred to [1940] now prohibit. In an endeavor to facilitate a fair and just settlement of the matter under reference, the Province of Saskatchewan has made the following offer to the Commission; that it was prepared to pass fifty percent of the natural flow of the Souris River where it crosses the international boundary at Sherwood Crossing to take care of the requirements of the Sate of North Dakota, provided the State of North Dakota would, for its part, pass sufficient water to Manitoba to take care of that Province's requirements. Unfortunately, Saskatchewan's offer has not been accepted and no progress whatsoever appears to have been made toward a permanent solution. A reference to the Commission should not be used to defeat the rights of Saskatchewan under the Treaty of 1909. Saskatchewan has been very patient and has made a most generous offer to facilitate a settlement. The Saskatchewan Government is prepared to stand by that offer, but is unwilling to delay further the development of its own natural resources in the Souris River basin.⁽²⁷⁾

In order to develop its portion of the Souris River basin, the T.C. Douglas government was apparently willing to take matters into its own hands. Such an extraordinary step reflects the increased importance Saskatchewan placed on the matter. Its position no doubt reflected that, whereas in 1940 the proposed uses for the water were relatively minor, at issue in 1959 was a major industrial project critical to the entire province: the construction of the Boundary Dam Power Station.

An agreement between Regina and Ottawa in 1959 lifted the 1940 apportionment and permitted Saskatchewan to retain 50 percent of the waters of the Souris River, demonstrating that a bipartisan solution to water issues on the Souris was achievable in Saskatchewan. It also showed that it was possible to circumvent the role of the IJC, as contemplated in the commission's 1940 report. In August 1957, Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker wrote to the secretary of the IJC:

The Government of Saskatchewan states that the interim measures recommended by the Commission in 1940 are delaying development in the Souris River watershed in Saskatchewan.

Accordingly it does not wish to be inhibited any longer by these interim measures. At the same time, the Provincial Government is willing to permit for the present the continued passage of fifty per cent of the natural flow of the water at Sherwood Crossing to reach agreement upon recommendation for a permanent settlement of the matters contained in the 1940 reference.

The Canadian Government considers that the application of the interim measures during the past sixteen years has provided opportunity to extend the period of streamflow data beyond that the accumulation of further records is not essential to a solution of the questions before the International Joint Commission.

The Canadian Government agrees with the view expressed by the Government of Saskatchewan that the interim measure of 1940 are an obstacle to the development of south-eastern Saskatchewan. Furthermore, the statement by the Province of Saskatchewan that it intends to permit fifty per cent of the natural flow of the water in Saskatchewan into North Dakota at Sherwood Crossing is a generous offer. In consequence, the Government of Canada requests that the interim measures recommended by the Commission be modified in accordance with paragraph 7 of the enclosed letter from the Province of Saskatchewan.⁽²⁸⁾

The evolution of the Souris River apportionment is an interesting on the context of the Rafferty and Alameda dams. For about two decades both Saskatchewan and Manitoba were prevented from developing their portions of the Souris River basin, despite the acknowledgment of the IJC that reservoirs on the water course made sense. The 1955 submission from the Saskatchewan government to the IJC concluded:

... development practically was brought to a standstill in this drainage basin. This was entirely due to the order of the Commission, issued in the intervening period of the war limiting Saskatchewan to 1,000 acre-feet for small domestic use only.⁽²⁹⁾

The United States was able to receive the majority of the waters from the Saskatchewan portion of the Souris River basin in the relatively wet years of the 1940s and 1950s, giving it a tremendous advantage in the sense that it was able to establish licensed uses- first in time, first in right. There is no question that Saskatchewan and Manitoba were adversely affected by the restrictive water allotments they were granted.

The interim apportionments of 1940 and 1959 are also interesting; they do not reflect the fact that the Saskatchewan government may have had a legal basis on which to argue that it had a right to all the Souris River waters originating in the province. The Saskatchewan letter to the Department of External Affairs in 1957 indicates that the province recognized it had broader rights than it had so far laid claim to. The Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 allowed the upstream user complete control of river flow on its side of the border, provided that upstream interests would be liable for any downstream damages the upstream uses may cause.⁽³⁰⁾

The IJC took an inordinate length of time to establish an arrangement even approaching an equitable division of the Souris River waters. The interests of Saskatchewan were at best tempered and at worst sacrificed because of the jurisdictional complexity of the river itself. If the upstream jurisdiction had an inherent legal right to all the waters originating within its borders, then Saskatchewan would store everything it could, North Dakota would do the same, and Manitoba would only receive the water that originated in its portion of the basin.⁽³¹⁾

While Saskatchewan may have had this legal right, the federal government and, by extrapolation, its representatives on the IJC, were not going to grant it. The resulting stalemate almost exclusively benefitted the state of North Dakota. The big loser was the province of Saskatchewan, particularly the residents of the Souris River basin, who were not only denied what was legally theirs but, for nineteen years at least, were unable to manage the river at all.

From the establishment of the 1959 interim measures until the end of the 1970s, little of what happened in relation to the Souris River basin gave residents cause to hope that their problems with the river would be solved. The opposite, in fact, was true. All their governments seemed able to do was conduct studies. Over this twenty-year period, there was no less than four major studies involving the Souris River. In the early 1970s, the federal, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba governments conducted the Saskatchewan-Nelson Basin Study. This included the Canadian portion of the Souris, and involved a number of investigations for potential dam sites, including Rafferty. The study also included some rather interesting proposals, such as the possibility of constructing a canal to reroute the Souris River directly into Manitoba, thus preventing it from flowing into the United States. There was also a proposal to connect the Qu'Appelle River to the Souris via an excavated channel.

Extensive flood damage in the late 1960s and early 1970s provoked an immediate response from basin residents on both sides of the international border. In Saskatchewan, a nonpartisan group calling itself the Moose Jaw - Souris River Association was formed in 1969, constituting an amalgam of mayors from southeastern Saskatchewan communities. The association was formed in an attempt to bring pressure to bear on senior levels of government to do something about the water management problems of this portion of the province:

We feel that an additional dam approximately seven miles upstream from Estevan would serve a number of functions.

... No mention has been made of the plan to develop a reservoir along Moose Mountain Creek water course in the vicinity of Alameda. It is our understanding that some work has been done on this study which would result in better flood control in the Oxbow area as well as providing a supply of water to be used for livestock, irrigation, recreation and wildlife. It should be noted that the flooding of this water course has caused very high flood peaks with the resulting downstream damage.

...we would like to point out that the estimates of the tie required to fill both the Boundary Dam Reservoir and the Diefenbaker Dam were underestimated. We understand that Boundary Dam was supposed to be full in three years. In fact it was filled in less than two. Diefenbaker Lake was supposed to require seven years. We understand that it required only three years. Even if there was abnormal evaporation we feel we cannot wait any longer for something to happen. We must have immediate action to get the dam west of Estevan - we need it now or we will be too late.⁽³²⁾

The nonpartisan nature of the organization is reflected in the fact that Moose Jaw mayor Louis "Scoop" Lewry, a well-known NDP supported, was a member, as was Estevan mayor Gregg Trout, a PC supported. According to Trout, the issue of water management as a partisan political issue never arose.⁽³³⁾ Water issues, by their nature, are not usually polical in a partisan sense. As late as 1970, political parties in the Saskatchewan Legislature appear not to have take positions on water management on the Souris.

Government response to demands for water management took the form of two federal-provincial studies: the Souris River Basin Study and the Qu'Appelle Rive Study. The former had two effects as far as the Rafferty-Alameda project was concerned. First, a major public consultation component was built into it with five task forces made up of citizens from various centers along the Canadian portion of the river. These groups were consulted by the staff of the study, itself comprised of consultants and officials from the federal, Saskatchewan and Manitoba governments. An unanticipated result of the study was the creation of a network among residents of the valley in Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and Manitoba, each of whom found that the problems they faced in their reach of the river were similar to those experienced by the others. This network easily resurrected itself during the Rafferty-Alameda project.

Second, the Souris River Basin Study reaffirmed the need for water management on the Souris, but concluded that the Rafferty Dam could not be justified on flood control objectives alone; an industrial component would be required. This finding proved sufficiently nebulous to allow the province, some seven years later, to proceed with the Rafferty Dam. No detailed attention in the Souris River Basin Study was paid to the possibility of a dam at Alameda on Moose Mountain Creek.

In the United States, the driving force in the 1970s was the flood of 1969. Minot straddles the Souris, and approximately 13,000 of its citizens lived in the flood plain. Many of its arterial roads crosses the valley, as well. In 1969, the flood plain was inundated for forty days. The flood crystallized the efforts at water management on the Souris in North Dakota and led to the search for solutions of the forty-ninth parallel.

Any project the size of a dam, or several dams, will tend to raise emotions and propel passionate individuals into the public light. This was certainly the case with Orlin "Bill" Hanson. A cowboy-hat-and-boot-wearing rancher, Hanson was raised on land adjacent to the Canadian border. Frequently citing that he attended his first Souris River flood control meeting in the 1950s, he parlayed the issue into a political career in the North Dakota House of Representatives and Senate. Hanson points out with pride that, in 1987, the Grand Forks Herald rated him the second most conservative state representative. "I don't believe in new laws and new rules and regulations," he says in a bottom-of-the-barrel voice and an accent that might be mistake for Texan, "unless it's absolutely necessary to protect the people."⁽³⁴⁾ I have heard him capture the essence of thirty-five years of continuous effort at acquiring water management on a river system where the extremes are often separated by half a generation. "The world suffers mightily," he says, "from those who don't know what took place beforehand and don't bother to find out or don't give a damn."⁽³⁵⁾

In the latter part of the 1970s residents of the North Dakota portion of the basin began to cast their eyes north to Saskatchewan and the possibility of acquiring flood protection from a structure or structures built in the Souris River headwaters in Canada. The advantage for American interests was that it would be possible to achieve the greatest level of flood protection at the lowest price and without the rancor that would inevitably ne attendant on a structure of similar capacity built on American soil. One of the first to recognize that the solution to North Dakota's problems with the Souris lay north of the border was Orlin Hanson.

Residents of the Saskatchewan portion of the Souris basin refused to allow government intransigence to deflect them from their cause. For decades, their calls for water management had fallen on deaf ears in both Regina and Ottawa, but they would not allow that to stop them. For them, the key would be Eric Berntson, member of the Legislative Assembly for the area encompassing the site of the Alameda Dam, future deputy premier of Saskatchewan, and friend and neighbor of Orlin Hanson. As the 1970s came to a close, both hydrologic and political forces were about to coalesce, creating for the first time the right set of circumstances for integrated water management on the Souris River, and the construction of the Rafferty and Alameda dams.