La Salle River Integrated Watershed Management Plan

La Salle River Watershed Assessment - (pdf version) click here

La Salle River State of the Watershed Report - click here

*Warning* Some images and reports may contain large files and take a longer time to download*

Is the La Salle River in Trouble?

Flooding, declining water quality, soil erosion, loss of wildlife habitat, streambank erosion, wetland drainage, lack of drought protection and increasing water demand are all common concerns for many watersheds in southern Manitoba, and the La Salle River is no different.

A recently completed Provincial water quality study identifies that nutrient loading to the La Salle River, which many experts consider the greatest threat to water quality, has nearly doubled in the past 30 years.  Spring and summer flooding of farm land and private property have increased in frequency and cost of damages. 

As populations increase, so are demands for access to drinkable water.  Development and intense use of areas near watercourses contribute to water contamination and reduce the stability of sensitive river banks.  Uncontrolled drainage of fields and wetlands can increase runoff intensity and reduce base flows of streams in dryer months.

These things all occur in the La Salle River Watershed but to what extent?  How concerned should we be?  What can we do about it?

 The Watershed Approach - A Local Solution

The issues identified above are not singular unrelated problems.  They cannot be fixed in isolation.  They are symptoms of a larger concern and must be treated as a system.  That system is the watershed!

Watersheds are defined as areas of land that captures precipitation (i.e. rain, snow melt) and funnels it to a river, lake or stream. It is a community where people, business, agriculture, government, institutions, plants, and animals are interconnected by the common water resource. The community influences the watershed and the watershed influences the community.

A watershed is a complex system and to protect its health everyone who has a stake in the watershed may have to make trade offs, compromises and maybe even some sacrifices to keep it healthy. A healthy watershed requires a community supported plan to protect this complex resource for current and future watershed residents. A watershed plan is a document prepared by the watershed community that describes the actions needed over time to achieve a sustainable healthy watershed.

The La Salle River Watershed Management Plan is simply an organized way of looking at big picture issues and setting long and short term priorities for improving the La Salle River Watershed. This plan will be holistic and provide a venue where all watershed residents, local municipalities and government agencies can openly discuss watershed concerns and work together to develop long term solutions. 

Why Do We Need a Watershed Plan for the La Salle River?

There are increasing pressures on the watershed due to a growing economy.  A watershed plan ensures the resources in the watershed are managed in a sustainable fashion. The plan is a roadmap for the community to help plan and practice good common sense programs, and help define what is important to the community. 

The watershed plan for the La Salle River will help set local priorities between need-to-do’s and nice-to-do’s and helps communicate to the public where the work will be done. It also demonstrates to senior governments that local people are in charge of managing their own resources. The plan also sets a way to measure future progress on meeting resource goals and objectives. 

The plan will help groups like the La Salle Redboine Conservation District set programming agendas and direct limited funds to watershed priorities. Information provided by the watershed management plan should be used by area planning districts in their development plans to avoid potential conflicts with existing or future development in the watershed.

An example would be valuable information about riparian protection or drinking water source protection included in the watershed plan used by the planning districts when land use policy statements are being prepared. Planning Districts and Municipalities should have input into the preparation of this plan and will be invited to participate in this process. 

Tying good land use planning to improving and protecting the health of the watershed is only common sense and everyone wins.

 How Does the Planning Process Work?

The La Salle River watershed encompasses 2,400km2 of the central plains region of Manitoba.  It is home to a large number of small communities including 5 rural municipalities and portions of the City of Winnipeg.  The watershed is also represented by 5 planning districts, a wide variety of producer groups, Hutterite Colonies, community associations, business associations and the La Salle Redboine Conservation District.

Under the recently enabled Water Protection Act, the La Salle Redboine Conservation District has been established as the Water Planning Authority (WPA) for the La Salle River Watershed.  This means that the Conservation District has been assigned the responsibility of preparing and implementing a watershed plan for the La Salle River.

This process will be a community driven  and requires the support, opinions and knowledge of the residents of the watershed and technical information from the Provincial and Federal Government.  Resident members and government representatives will form a Water Planning Advisory Team (WPAT) that will debate the issues and provide expertise to the WPA for consideration in the final plan.

Information about the state of the watershed will be collected and presented to all members of the WPAT and WPA.  The issues will be identified and reasonable solutions will be recommended. 

Community consultations will also take place at various times during the planning process in several communities throughout the watershed.  At these meetings information will be provided to the public about the progress of the plan and the state of the watershed.  The public is encouraged to provide feedback to the WPAT & WPA for consideration in the final plan.

Once all information has been received, community comments evaluated and final plan prepared, the recommendations of the plan will be implemented by agencies as indicated.

The watershed plan will be completed within a two year time frame and ready to be implemented in early 2008.  A full scale review of the progress of the plan will also be completed in 2013 to identify successes, failures and to introduce refinements to ensure the plan is up to date with the needs of the watershed. 

Benefits from the Planning Process

State of the Watershed Report—This document will pull information from several sources to quantify the current state of the La Salle River Watershed.  The information contained in the report will be extensively used to evaluate the requirements of the final watershed plan.

Watershed Report Cards—This simplistic report will be widely distributed throughout the watershed and will contain provincial indicators for the health of the watershed.  These report cards will be completed periodically in the future and will be useful in presenting and evaluating the success and shortcomings of the watershed plan.

Source Water Protection Plan— This plan will be prepared for drinking water sources in the watershed.  Using available information this plan will identify, assess and mitigate threats to domestic drinking water supplies. 

Public Awareness—This is probably the single most important deliverable from the entire process.  A heightened public awareness about the health issues and potential solutions to concerns of the La Salle River Watershed. 

Along with these benefits,  the La Salle River Integrated Watershed Management Plan aims to provide the residents of the watershed with source water protection plan and a water management plan along with a business and monitoring plan. These components are engineered to provide a multi-barrier approach to aquatic ecosystem and drinking water source protection.

Anticipated Timeline and Plan

Establish LSRBCD as the WPA for the La Salle River  -                                                        Completed April 2006

Develop Terms of Reference -    Completed June 2006

Gather Technical Information, Complete State of Watershed Report -                                                        Completed  December 2006

WPA Review of Technical Information -

                                                        Completed January 2007

Public Consult - Comment On & Identify Watershed Issues-

                                                        Completed February 2007

WPA Assemble Draft Plan - Anticipated Completion - September 2007

Public Consult - Comment of Draft Plan -                                              Anticipated Completion - November 2007    Location to be Announced

WPA Assemble Final Plan -    Anticipated Completion -August 2008

Provincial Approval of Final Plan -                                                                   Anticipated Completion - November 2008

Public consult/ Inform Final Plan -                                                        Anticipated Completion - February 2009