MainDB: Best Management Practice: Okabena C and D and Drainage Ditch

Title: Best Management Practice: Okabena C and D and Drainage Ditch
NWPWeblink: https://www.schoolofpublicpolicy.sk.ca/

https://www.saskbmp.com/post/okabena
NWPTypeOfOrganization: University/education/training organization
NWPGeographicRegion: North America
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Good practices and lessons learned: The Okabena C&D project was a success and there are several lessons that can be learned from this project and implemented into a framework for best practices in adaptive water management.
Creating Okabena C&D as a Water Adaptation
A major good practice and lesson learned was that the C and D coordination was favored upon other means of controlling the drainage, is because of a strong role played by producers and their self-sufficiency in securing funding. Another reason included that theland-based draining was large and a C&D area with a board could better fund and maintain the project as the producers would have mind control on their work. Further if they need maintenance or infrastructure replacements, it is easier to fund it in a levy system. Furthermore, liability insurance is provided to C&Ds through the Saskatchewan Conservation and Development Association.

C&D Governance and Maintenance
Another lesson learned and outcome was with regards to the governance and the maintenance of the C and D. Apart from the partial funding from the government that contributed greatly to the project, the producers worked as a financially self-sufficient group.

As an organization, every C&D has a yearly audit to set the budget that is required for it to operate and the budget comes from levies on the landowners. Currently, there is a C&D Board consisting of 5 members governing and overseeing the C&D based on C&D legislation. The board is all volunteers that get reimbursed for annual meetings. The board charges the landowners with 70 cents an acre for operations and 38 cents an acre for administration. The board has a secretary that helps with ongoing work such as complaints, record-keeping, expenses, and maintenance.
The board is responsible for the water infrastructure in the area and the water that flows through the main ditch onward into Lake Winnipeg. Therefore, if there are any issues with culverts not draining properly in the C&D or if there are constructions or activities in neighboring areas that may impact the quality of water in the Okabena C&D area or in case of any concerns, the board maintains the integrity and may consult with WSA.
In an example, the board was consulted as a third party to put forth their concern so that everything is discussed before the certificate of construction for a neighbor gets approved, even though the construction was legislated by provincial regulations from the Ministry of Environment.
Duplication of processes
As Okabena was the first C&D in the province built after more than thirty years. At first it was challenging for the producers to understand the Conservation and Development Act of Saskatchewan and follow the different processes that needed to be completed to establish the C&D. However, after its completion, Okabena worked as a model to create more C&Ds in the province. MJRWS a produced a manual on developing C&Ds that is available online and at least five other C&Ds were developed in the province after Okabena.
The mandate of creating more C&Ds to protect the water will be carried by a partnership between Saskatchewan Conservation and Development Association, Water Security Agency as the regulator, and MJRWS from an environmental benefit perspective with a stewardship approach.

Collaborative Forms of Working and Effective Leadership
By developing C&Ds, landowners engage to work collaboratively to tackle agricultural water management issues as a community rather than as individuals and have local governance over local water management issues. For creating and implementing water management projects within their boundaries, producers are able to borrow financial resources, expropriate land and introduce administrative and operational levies to the municipal tax roll. Establishment of C&Ds is increasingly known as an effective public interest tool to provide responsible water management on agricultural lands.. A positive quality of C&Ds is that they are community-based projects. They create communities so that landowners work together for the betterment and are committed to their collective benefits. In this way, no single landowner will simply act alone on their self-interest to create ditches. Instead, they worked together to implement the environmental components of the project such as vegetating ditches and staging the water.
Collaboration emerged over a period of time. When the C&D was first established, there were some hard feelings between landowners that was a hinderance for producers to working together. This was eventually resolved when community demonstrated more openness and willingness to put aside the incidents of the past and work towards a common objective and collective benefit through a C and D.
Another factor that benefited the project was that there were not a large number of landowners so they could work closely and cooperatively. Moosejaw River Watershed Stewards Association and the Water Security Agency also played a role in the success of the project. A strong role was played by the government educating and interacting with people.
As the petition had to be signed by the landowners within the area to form the C&D, the producers that had taken the initiative of forming the C&D and later created the C&D board, where representatives of the board had one-on-one conservations with each producer. Through these conservations, the producers understood how that the project would be a benefit to them and agreed to be involved in it. The leadership explained that these initial phases should have the patience to talk to people and be good communicators.
The major lesson learned from this exercise is that not only is collaboration between the participants important but also the effective leadership on part of both producers but also government to care about the mandate of the project that allowed greater engagement of people to make a difference. Thus an important developing the C&D, leaders or champions of the community should be identified as the community also will support and follow them.
Funding Availability
Local watersheds need additional funding and support from different government departments, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Highways, Environment, and Municipal Affairs to establish C&Ds and producers should also be more patient with government timelines and processes.
C and D and Climate Change
Another lesson learnt by the farmers is the importance of climate change. Their farming practices and technology that they use for pesticide have changed. Because of Saskatchewan’s extreme weather conditions, climate change has escalated the need to act. Water Security Agency has a strong agricultural water management strategy. Similarly, neighbouring provinces have strong mitigation plans.
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Abbreviation: U of R
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Adaptation element: Adaptation planning and practices; Institutional arrangements
Adaptation sector/theme: Water resources; Ecosystem-based adaptation
Climate hazard: Floods
Country: Canada
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Description: Okabena is a Conservation and Development area (“C and D”) in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. It was defined and established in 2012 by the Minister responsible for Saskatchewan Watershed Authority, as “The Okabena Conservation and Development Area Number One Hundred and Seventy-six”. A Conservation and Development Area in Canada is defined as a governance institution that allows landowners to work together in developing agricultural water management projects for better agricultural productivity, better water quality and greater climate adaptation. The Okabena C and D area covers 14,800 acres of land that drain towards Moose Jaw River and is located near Regina, the capital city of Saskatchewan. The main objective of this study is to document the best management practice that is the C and D and big ditch drainage that have been implemented in Okabena to engage in agricultural water management. The study that was identified through a discussion with the Water Security Agency of Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan Association of Watersheds.
The main problem that this area has been facing was that of agricultural runoff that is high in sediments. Individual farmers had cut ditches to drain water off their land to maximize their crop returns. These localised ditches were causing uncontrolled volumes and velocities of water runoff to the nearby Moosejaw River. Erosion and sedimentation would also lead to poor water quality as the drainage carried soil-absorbed polluting chemicals. Land that is heavily drained leads to greater levels of nutrients and sediments dumped into surface water thereby decreasing downstream water quality. Another consequence of the field drainage activities is the increased costs to downstream landowners due to flooding problems associated with greater flows of water moving across fields and longer durations of standing water restricting agricultural production activities. As all the producers within the basin were draining water from their land, they all had to take responsibility for the damage which resulted in erosion and sedimentation.
The Best Management Practice adopted by the Okabena was the creation of a C and D, in partnership with watershed agencies such as Moosejaw River Watershed Stewards (MJRWS) and the Water Security Agency (WSA) for the creation of a drainage ditch that diverts the agricultural run-off into the Moosejaw River in 2011.
The aim of the Okabena C and D project was to reduce sedimentation and improve water quality entering the Moose Jaw River’s main channel. C&D’s provide local governance over local water management issues utilising the knowledge of landowners. The C&D’s aim to develop engineering solutions like drainage ditches and flood control mechanisms. C&D projects embrace a drainage stewardship approach and through proper ditch construction with grassed waterways, sedimentation and nutrient loading into downstream waters is reduced.
The Okabena C and D was formed after 30 years and 3 attempts. It was the first C&D that was developed in Saskatchewan since 1970s. It informed and facilitated development of other C&Ds within the area. In 2011, the project was initiated by Moose Jaw River Watershed Stewards (MJRWS) where a successful collaboration between the MJRWS, producers within the C&D area, and Water Security Agency (WSA) was formed.
The project was partially funded by the government and partially by levies on municipal taxes. Engineering firms were hired to design and construct the ditch drainage and the project was completed in 2013. The total cost of the project was $900,000 and the government contributed $280,000 through a pilot project program with ongoing costs per acre for maintenance being levied on rural municipal taxes.
Forming the C and D was a tedious process. The initial group comprised of 14 landowners in 2011. By 2016 it included about 50 producers in two rural municipalities (Briere, 2016a). Land was consolidated by bigger farms (around 1400 acres) The Conservation and Development Act of Saskatchewan, legislated in 1949, allows land-owners in a certain area to petition for a C&D Association.
C&Ds are producer led organizations with an elected board with the ability to control land, design, construct, and maintain flood control and other works on be- half of producers within the area. C&Ds are also drainage, or sub-drainage, basins defined by hydrology of the landscape (WSA, 2017).
Producers within or close to a C&D area can request to add a parcel of land to the C&D for drainage or take a land out of the C&D if drainage is not happening (Drainage Stewardship Upper Souris Watershed Association, 2016; Briere, 2016b).
To establish the C&D, producers communicated with their neighbors and a series of more than six meetings was held between 2011 and 2012 to bring everyone together and engage them.

Through a democratic/consultative process tall agreed to the project to move ahead. A business plan was created preceding the development of the C&D. The producers in the drainage basin also decided that they needed to form a C&D with the ability to control land and tax for maintenance, and approve future works. After the initial agreement, when they had the engineered plan with associated costs of building the drainage, everyone was consulted again and voted for the plan. The C&D board got consent of the plan from landowners and the Saskatchewan Environment Ministry. They had to get approval from everybody that had a quarter section within that area for the project to go ahead. 48 landowners within the water basin signed permits to agree to the plan to form the C&D. Landowners permissions allowed the group to receive approval from WSA and the recognition of C&D. They agreed to improve the main waterway through engineered designs, resloping, revegetating, and installation of control structures.
C&Ds work closely with WSA. WSA has the authority to apply taxes to the municipal tax roll within the C&Ds for construction and maintenance costs. A legally binding petition was developed with WSA, signed by two-thirds of the landowners, and then presented to the Minister in charge for approval to form a C&D. Similar to the process of becoming a C&D, the producer group brings drainage works into regulatory compliance and new engineered works also should be approved by WSA for the construction to take place.
Project leaders within the producers and the governmental agencies were identified as the champions of the project to enhance collaboration between themselves. Project leaders within the producers demonstrated effective volunteerism and leadership to build a community of producers that worked together for the betterment and committed to their collective benefits.
The project was an engineered drainage channel to minimize the sedimentation and erosion discharged into the Moose Jaw River and to reduce the impact of flooding on farmland. After the C&D was established and the plan got approved, an engineering firm was hired through WSA to set out the drainage area and drainage design. Afterwards, a contractor was hired to build the drainage.
The project was designed by the engineering firm AECOM. AECOM is an engineering and infrastructure firm that develops and implements solutions to complex environmental challenges and projects. They collected data and conducted field surveys. Their findings suggested that in the upland, the runs and ditches were shallow and farmed through normal agricultural operations. They noted that on the lower reach of the creek (south of the railroad), the slope is steeper and the channel becomes deeper and more defined. The solution to the problem was to control the erosion by shaping and sloping the channels, seeding them to grass and installing grade control structures. Ditches could not be made straight from the producers’ lands to the river because that increases velocity’s flow.
Therefore, the project followed the course of the natural waterway of the drainage back to the actual waterway of the Moose Jaw River. Through the creation of the vegetated ditches, erosion and sedimentation is reduced. In addition to erosion, significant rainfall events contributed to runoff that could also cause flooding. In that regard, the capacity of culverts through the highway and the railroad were evaluated and adapted to meet the normal flood frequency criteria.
They came up with a business plan for the producers’ area. The plan execution comprised of excavating existing water drainage streams that were within the topography of the land. After these drainage streams were cleaned out the culverts across the highway and the railroad tracks and other roads were more strategically placed to contain the flow to navigate it through certain areas to slow down the flow as it makes it way down to the river.
Another important factor of the engineering was they had to hold back the upstream water to stage the stream and control the flow. For this very reason the natural waterway of this drainage program is gated culvert. As the water streams open up in the spring, the gated culverts hold back the water up top. So those culverts open from the bottom to the top and at first the top culverts stay closed.
The construction of the ditch started in the fall of 2012 and was finished in a very timely manner by the winter of 2013. The three main channels did not get grassed until the summer of 2013. There was heavy snowfall and spring run-off in the winter but there was no damage to the project. The cost of Okabena project was CAD $900,000. The engineering and design of the ditch cost CAD $68,000. The construction of the ditch cost approximately $700,000 and there were some other contingency expenses.
The project funding came partially from the province and partially from the producers through the C&D levies. The Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) and the Provincial Council of Add Boards (PCAB) contributed through the Canada-Saskatchewan Farm Stewardship Program for a cost sharing project. This relief fund of CAD 2,80,000 was available as the government was trying to come up with a solution to the excess water problem apart from crop insurance and other ad hoc payments, which are band-aid approaches. There was funding available for producers to reduce sedimentation and erosion and improve water quality. The Farm Stewardship Program was to fund 75% of the total project costs up to a maximum of $280,000. The remaining were to be funded by the landowners and costs per acre for maintenance levied on rural municipal taxes.. The levy was $53 an acre and the distribution over 10 years facilitated the payment for landowners.
In 2012, the Okabena C&D Board requested the local Government Committee of Saskatchewan Municipal Board (SMB) to incur expenditures and create a debt not payable within the current year, in the sum of up to $800,000. The amount of debt to be payable on completion of construction and finalization of long-term borrowing, but not later than December 31, 2013 with interest at a fixed interest rate not to exceed 5.6% per annum, payable annually. The local Government Committee authorized the SMB to borrow the sum of $800,000.
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Further information: NA
NWPGeographicScope: Local
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NWPInformationType: Case study
NWPJoinDate: 08/08/2024
NWPPartner: University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
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Target group: Academics and scientists; Communities; Policy makers
NWPWorkStream: NWP
NWPYear: 2,023
NWPOutcome: Okabena C and D as a governance institution
The outcome of the Best Management Practices was the creation of the C and D authority, a governance institution and the engineering channel of the big ditch drainage. The Okabena C&D area was created in 2012. After three successive attempts to create the C and D the producers were able to effectively coordinate themselves and work collaboratively with Moose Jaw River Watershed Stewards, a watershed association, in Farm Stewardship Programming. They received additional support and funding as a C&D area from multiple agencies. The Conservation and Development Act of Saskatchewan and Water Security Agency guidelines were used to build in the project. The Okabena C and D is a high quality and robust governance institution that offers multiple benefits apart from improving water quality and better agricultural productivity. It also improves water quality and is a climate-adaptive measure.
After overcoming the challenges of using 1949 the Conservation and Development Act of Saskatchewan and establishing Okabena as a C&D area, Okabena was used as a model and more C&Ds were created in the area. The members of the Okabena C&D consider the completion of the project as a legacy in the area as the Okabena was the first C&D in the province in thirty years. The smooth process of creating the C and D has led to similar processes being formulated.
The Drainage Ditch- an Engineering Success
The second outcome of the Okabena C and D processes was the engineering of the big ditch drainage, the water flows at the top end and the peak flow of the water entering the Moose Jaw River were identified.
It takes more than ten years for the ditches to get vegetated, however, the results in 2016 also shown less sedimentation as a consequence of the vegetation process. Producers have also expressed high satisfaction as the water has gotten drained off and crop yields have become better.
Tests within Okabena in 2016 have shown that there has been a significant reduction in bacteria and sedimentation which improves water quality entering the Moose Jaw River’s main channel. This is because the water is now flowing with a less velocity and through a grassed natural waterway. The producers have seen the change in the area by experiencing repetitive dry and wet cycles every ten years.
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NWPReferences: Biere, K. (2016a). Okabena project- a model of success retrieved from https://www.producer.com by 2020/12/07

Biere, K. (2016b). Much ado about drainage retrieved from https://www.producer.com/news/much-ado-about-drainage/ by 2020/12/07

Biere, K. (2016c). New regulations could make drainage easier retrieved from https://www.producer.com/news/new-regulations could-make-drainage-easier/ by 2020/12/07

Drainage Stewardship Upper Souris Watershed Association (2016) retrieved from http://lowersouris.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/06/Final_Draina e_Stewardship_Book.pdf by 2020/12/07

Esri Inc. (2020). ArcGIS Pro (Version 2.5) [Okabena location]. Esri Inc.

Esri Inc. (2020). ArcGIS Pro (Version 2.5) [Area of Okabena C&D]. Esri Inc.

Needelman, B. A., Kleinman, P. J., Strock, J. S., & Allen, A. L. (2007). Drainage ditches: Improved management of agricultural drainage ditches for water quality protection: An overview. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 62(4), 171-178.

Saskatchewan watershed authority. 2006. Moose Jaw river watershed, source water protection plan retrieved from https://www.wsask.ca/Global/Water%20Info/Watershed%20Planni g/MooseJawRiverWatershedSourceWaterProtectionPlan.pdf by 2020/12/07

The Saskatchewan Gazette, Authority of queen’s printer. (2014). Retrieved from https://publications.saskatchewan.ca/api/v1/products/70846/for ats/78741/download by 2020/12/07

Water Security Agency (WSA). 2017. Conservation Development Area Authority, The Guide retrieved from https://www.wsask.ca/Global/Water%20Programs/Agricultural%2 Drainage/Agricultural%20Water%20Management%20Strategy/C%2 and%20D%20Development%20 Guide%20Final%20low%20res%20for%20web.pdf by 2020/12/07

Water Security Agency. (2021). Saskatchewan Water security plan 2025. See https://www.wsask.ca/Global/About%20WSA/25%20Year%20Wate %20Security%20Plan/WSA_25Year Reportweb.pdf. Accessed on 14.2.2021.
Implementing partners: The project was initiated in 2011 by Moose Jaw River Watershed Stewards (MJRWS) and was a successful collaboration between the MJRWS, producers within the C&D area, and Water Security Agency (WSA). The project was partially funded by the government and partially by levies on municipal taxes. Engineering firms were hired to design and construct the ditch drainage and the project was completed in 2013.
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SourceItemID: 2552
NWPSecendaryEmail: abg961@uregina.ca
NWPPrimaryEmail: asmitabhardwaj8@gmail.com
NWPTypeOfKnowledge: Technical document/report
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NWPRelevantWeblinks: https://www.saskbmp.com/post/okabena;#Okabena C and D and Drainage Ditch

Created at 08/08/2024 17:00 by crmmocservices
Last modified at 08/08/2024 17:12 by Kelsey Warren

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