Tile Drainage & Storage Innovation with Swan Lake First Nation

By Cliff Greenfield, Manager, Pembina Valley Watershed District

Last fall, the Swan Lake First Nation partnered with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientists and the Pembina Valley Watershed District for the Living Lab-Eastern Prairies. We are looking at ways to make improve marginal land at a field-level scale.

We have made great progress. The Swan Lake First Nation Project SL-S49 infrastructure was 90% completed last season. It includes enhanced drainage with the installation of tile over an 11-acre wet area in the field and a water retention dam to treat the runoff from the tile and upstream area.

Next season we will be putting in place a saturated buffer and wetland terrace will be completed this season to also treat the runoff and planting pollinator-friendly plants in the disturbed areas of the project. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada researchers are working on developing and testing a seed mix for this site. 

Typically, tile runoff has elevated salts and nitrates and reduced phosphorus. We believe that the combination of these best management practices can treat this problem. To test our theories, monitoring will be done to measure the impacts of these enhancements and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientists will be on hand to do the water testing. In addition, AAFC staff are working on a seed mix design for this site and will run the water monitoring program.

Randy Dow, our technician at the Pembina Valley Watershed District, is designing a wetland terrace in partnership with Swan Lake First Nation.

Pembina Valley Watershed District is interested in talking to more landowners in the Swan Lake Watershed about their interests and how we could work with them on their environmental issues.

As a partner in Living Lab-Eastern Prairies, we are excited to blaze a new trail that is already improving partnerships between local farmers, researchers, conservation groups, and Indigenous peoples. Collaboration is complicated, but we believe it will pay off in the form of healthier farms and watersheds.

Swan Lake First Nation Project SL-S49. This project was 90% completed last season with the picture showing the contractor atop of the newly completed dam. Topsoil placement, main water control valve, pollinator plant seeding, saturated vegetated buffer, and the wetland terrace are aspects that will be finished this summer.

Looking east, there is a valve control (black box beside the flag) in the foreground that controls and measures the flow from the tile. The 11-acre tiled area is seen in the picture as rough lines or patches. Water from the tile will be monitored for volume as well as water quality.

Looking west at the same valve control (black box beside the flag) there is a surface ditch and tile furrow that will take this water either to the newly construed dam or saturated buffer. Both BMPs will be monitored for how they remove sediments and nutrients from the runoff and result in better water for the downstream Pembina River and Swan Lake. This project is designed to test BMPs that farmers can use to make their farms more sustainable resulting in healthier watersheds and more productive farms.

This picture shows the dam without any water held back—the remainder of construction and seeding will take place in time to capture mid-summer rains, at which point water quantity and quality monitoring will commence. Monitoring of this project is expected to take place for the next 3.5 seasons.