Mayor Larry Johannson joins board as new member
The International Red River Watershed Board held a public meeting on Aug. 21 in Grand Beach to let local residents know what the board does and why this international alliance is important in our region.
The meeting started with board member Mark Lee introducing himself and the other members of the board before a land acknowledgement took place.
Rebecca Seal-Soileau the board’s secretary from the US Army Corp then stepped up to moderate the meeting letting attendees know that the board was interested in feedback from them.
“Management and understanding and building relationship with the water resources throughout all of our basins really depends on all of us having two-way communication from science and then the people that live there and experience it,” she said.
Karl Jansen, the United States co-chair of the International Red River Watershed Board took to the front to talk about the International Red River Watershed Board’s beginnings.
“I’ll talk a little bit high level about the International Joint Commission, but I’ll tell you that the most important thing that we do is interact with the people that we serve,” he said.
Jansen then went on to talk about the International Joint Commission which was founded in 1909 with the International Joint Waters Treaty. This treaty is important because there’s no other agreement like it internationally.
“We have two countries, neighbours who are peacefully working through issues with shared waters. In other parts of the world, people go to war over their water,” he said explaining that this is a terrific model for the rest of the world.
International Red River Watershed Board is the board that deals with the Red River watershed which is one of many watersheds that span the US-Canada border and they report to the International Joint Commission.
A noteworthy local member of this board is Selkirk Mayor Larry Johannson who is a recent addition to the board.
Canadian Chair of the Board Patrick Cherneski then took to the stage to go more into detail.
“[The Red River is a] really interesting basin. It’s often described as a bit of a bathtub. Water very much has to flow north. There’s an escarpment on each side. Everyone here is familiar with the flooding in the Red River Valley and that was one of the original issues that the Board was created for,” he said.
Though the International Joint Commission was created over a century ago, the International Red River Watershed Board came to being in 2000 in response to the flood of 1997. Though the flood kickstarted the Board, their mandate has expanded to include the not just dealing with issues that can increase flooding but health of the watershed.
Cherneski explained that a big part of the board’s job is monitoring across water supply, across water quality, across aquatic ecosystem health and supporting the health of the aquatic life and integrity of the aquatic ecosystem.
One of the requirements of each of the International Joint Commission boards is to produce a report with information each year and residents can learn more from this report which is available online at the International Red River Watershed Board website.
He then went on to explain the structure and members of the International Red River Watershed Board and how it maintains parity between both countries by including members from both sides of the border.
From there, the presentation was taken over again by Lee who discussed some of the many projects that the International Red River Watershed Board is involved in.
“It’s about a million square kilometers of land so there’s a lot going on across that watershed that affects Lake Winnipeg. There are about 7 million people that live in the watershed. So, a lot of people from all across the watershed [and] the decisions they make ultimately impact Lake Winnipeg. So, it’s a big problem. When you want to improve Lake Winnipeg, there’s a big area and a lot of people that you have to impact,” said Lee.
Something that Lee noted was that though the Red River is only the third largest river contributing water to Lake Winnipeg, it contributes about 70 per cent of the Lake’s phosphorus. He explained that the rich fertile land in the region has a naturally higher load of phosphorus but human activity is also contributing to this number.
He then went into the history of the area and how the very flat terrain in addition to the heavy clay soil means that water isn’t absorbed as well by the land leading to why the Red River Valley naturally has so much flooding. He showed this using a 3-D map which showed the topography of the region.
After talking about hydrology Lee moved on to water quality.
“Canada and the US have agreed on bi-national objectives on water quality on the Red River. We’ve been monitoring, as a board, water quality for a long time. They had five parameters in 1969. They added more parameters in 1986 and most recently, and probably most interesting to this group, in 2022 they added nutrient objectives,” said Lee.
The nutrient objectives currently indicate that the International Red River Watershed Board is trying to reach 1990 levels of nutrients, this is because this was about when the severity and frequency of algae blooms increased.
The final bit of the presentation at the meeting was taken over by Lee Gutowsky the International Red River Watershed Board’s aquatic ecosystem co-chair who spoke about the work that they have been doing monitoring fish in the Red River.
Right now about 11,050 fish have been tagged over 10 species with transmitters that can be picked up by receivers in the Red River and Lake Winnipeg. Gutowsky explained that this does require fish to swim by a receiver but it allows them to track the movement of fish in the river.
“One fun fact about channel catfish is that when you tag these fish, they’re able to actually expel their transmitter. They just ingest it into the intestine and excrete it. So they’re really difficult to study. We’ve had a tough time getting data from channel catfish,” said Gutowsky.
Gutowsky then went through a couple of restoration projects that have taken place removing dams to increase fish interconnectivity in the river.
From there, there was a short question and answer period followed by a presentation by Grand Beach’s Betty Clark. Clark spoke about her experience of the Red River, Grand Beach and Lake Winnipeg as a long-time Grand Beach resident.
Clark spoke about how her father purchased their cottage in 1950 for $300 and how in the past ice was cut from the Lake for the community’s iceboxes. A very interesting memory that she shared was about how the train whistling as it came into town to pick up passengers was also the last call whistle.
In conclusion, she said, “After 71 years in my little piece of paradise, I cannot help but have the confidence that all will be well with the expertise of this fine group. Many thanks.”
