The Fish Lake Drain in the RM of Armstrong has long been a source of flooding woes for some landowners living along the lengthy drain that runs from an eponymously named lake in the RM of Armstrong to an outlet near Camp Morton in the RM of Gimli.
For the past month they say they’re land is being flooded by a beaver dam and compounded by high water levels in the drain, which was built by and is operated by the provincial government.
The Fish Lake Drain runs east along Road 118 in the RM of Armstrong. It floods landowners near the junction of Road 118 and Road 8, a few miles west of Highway 7
Evita Kalski owns agricultural land between municipal roads 117 and 118, near the junction Road 8, which is a few miles west of Highway 7. The Fish Lake Drain has been flooding her land – and that of her neighbours’ land – since the 1960s when the drain was built.
In addition to flooding agricultural land, the drain causes water to spill over and saturate Road 118, a municipally owned gravel road, as there’s only one ditch on the north side of the road and that ditch can’t handle significant flows.
Kalski and her fellow farmers have been trying for decades to get the municipality and the province to come up with a solution to chronic flooding along the drain.
About a month ago, they noticed a “trickle” of water in the drain to the east of Road 8 and discovered a beaver dam was backing everything up to the west. That’s also flooding their land.
“[The province] usually empties the Fish Lake Drain during the summer and it flows all summer. This summer they didn’t open it. The drain to Gimli was dry. Then they opened it about a month ago and let it run, and it was right up to the top. Now the beavers have built dams in the drain so the water isn’t flowing anywhere past Roads 118 and 8,” said Kalski last week. “That’s where the flooding is. Past that, the drain is basically a trickle. Everything west of that, the water is really high. It’s also backing up into the old Rembrandt Drain. Anywhere the water can go, that’s where its ‘going. And, of course, it’s flowing back onto our land again and we’re under water, as usual.”
In 2021, Kalski estimated that she lost 70 per cent of her family’s land over the years to chronic flooding. A neighbour of Kalski’s, whom the Express spoke with a number of years ago, said he estimates he’s lost a couple of hundred acres to chronic flooding caused by the Fish Lake Drain and that he’s been asking for 40 years for upgrades. The province brought out [culverts, pipes] to an area where the drain was supposed to be upgraded after a major flood over a decade or so ago, but the project never proceeded and equipment has sat there since then.
Kalski said it baffles her that no drain was ever built along the south side of Road 118, which the Fish Lake Drain follows, and that she’s asked for what seems like a century to have another ditch constructed along the road to handle the water and allow farmers to reclaim their lands.
With regard to the beaver dam backing up the water in the Fish Lake Drain and flooding her and her neighbours’ land, she said she called Armstrong municipality about a month ago, and spoke with the reeve (Garry Wasylowski) and also left messages for other staff.
“[Garry] said he’d look after it. That was about a month ago,” said Kalski.
Armstrong reeve Garry Wasylowski told the Express he and the RM reached out to the province after hearing from Kalski.
“The province is opening up the [beaver] dam. But the beavers plug it again so they’ve got to trap them,” said Wasylowski.
The Fish Lake Drain is an “ongoing issue” that landowners and the RM have been dealing with for decades, he said. The reason the province built it was that the water naturally ran to the Icelandic River and could flood Arborg.
“They put a dyke in and made the drain to save the town of Arborg, which was the right thing to do. Now we have to make sure we control it properly,” he said.
Because it’s been a dry year, flooding hasn’t been “as bad as it could be” but the drain, nevertheless, does not operate properly.
“The water in Fish Lake is being stored too high and can cause problems. We as a council want that water drained. We’ve got to look at both ends of the drain. The water on Fish Lake is very high. If we get any amount of snow over the winter, the height of the water on Fish Lake will cause problems – bigger problems than beavers plugging that drain,” he said.
“They [the province] are holding the water at the upper limit and we don’t have a lower limit set. We used to have those limits set long ago, but we’re going to have to work with the province to get that operating level set for both upper and lower limits. It you’re holding it at the upper limit, and you get spring runoff, you’ll obviously be creating floods because it breaches the dyke.”
With regard to the stalled upgrade project the province was supposed to carry out long ago, Wasylowski said the culverts/pipes the province was going to use to upgrade the drain have been sitting near the drain since 2006. But there’s hope this current government will start the project.
“Twenty years ago, they hauled some culverts out there and were supposed to re-build the whole drain,” said the reeve. “Since I’ve been back on council, we’re working with the province, and we were told that this year is the design year. Next year they’ll be acquiring land. And in 2027 they’ll start re-building the Fish Lake Drain. It’s got to be done. It was supposed to be done 20 years ago and the province didn’t move on that.”
A spokesperson for Manitoba transportation and infrastructure said the department has been dealing with the dams and working on lowering water levels in the drain since summer.
“Manitoba transportation and infrastructure has been working since summer to mitigate beaver dams and gradually reduce water levels in the Fish Lake Drain while also preventing overland flooding,” said the spokesperson. “Water levels have been sufficiently reduced and the department has removed the dam. The department is communicating with the Rural Municipality of Armstrong regarding this work.”
Kalski followed up with the Express on the weekend, saying she got a call from a neighbour near Meleb who reported the water in the drain was now flowing east.
