For two years the Town of Okotoks has been out shopping for water licences.

It has been a difficult and frustrating search for town officials who approached as many as 2,000 water licence holders in search of more water for Okotoks.

Okotoks municipal manager Richard Quail said many people were not interested in even talking about their water licences.

“There is a complete lack of understanding and awareness around this,” said Quail. “People are calling to talk to us to understand.”

The Town’s problems escalated when the water crunch put a temporary halt on new development this spring. Three developers had to put projects on hold while the Town continued its search. The Town was nearing its licensed water allocations and was as close as 1,000 people away from reaching its limit.

Okotoks has access to 608 million gallons of water per year, enough for 24,500 people. Okotoks’ population is close to 23,000 people and there was concern the Town would reach its water capacity by the fall of this year.

As a result, securing additional water licence was a top priority.

The Town said the cost of buying additional water licences is not going to increase the cost of land in Okotoks. Quail said the Town is still competitive with other communities. In fact, Okotoks has similar charges for developers in Chestermere and is lower than Calgary and Airdrie. High River’s land development fees are almost $12,000 less than Okotoks.

In early June the Town finally secured a water licence. They paid $1 million for enough water for another 2,000 people. Okotoks asked the Province if there were any grants available for the purchase of water licences, but were told no funding was available for a transfer.

CanEra Resources agreed to transfer a portion of their licence to the Town and will use the money to create a charity to fund local projects. The Town now needs Provincial approval for the water licence transfer to go ahead. In the meantime, Okotoks continues to negotiate for a second water licence transfer. Quail said the Town could require as many as 15 licences to get to their 30,000 population cap.

“It will require a series of water licence transfers,” said Quail. “To achieve that an open and transparent water licence transfer system is needed.”

The process has also been expensive for the Town. Quail estimates $25,000 has been spent on independent contractors to help them with the application by providing environmental and scientific research required by the Province to determine what impact the water licence transfer could have on the waterways involved.

CanEra is the largest water licence holder on the Sheep River with access to 715,420 cubic metres annually. Vice-president Brian D. Evans said the water licence was fairly new to CanEra which bought the licence along with Talisman’s oil development projects in southwest Alberta last fall.

Evans said they have technical staff who are familiar with the water licence and its requirements, but were not familiar with the water license transfer system.

When the Town of Okotoks came to CanEra this spring in search of water, Evans became involved and put himself through a crash course on the system.

“It was brand new to me,” said Evans. “So I started to do some individual research.”

Finding information on how and why the Province was proceeding with the transfer system and had discontinued approving new licences in the South Saskatchewan River Basin was not difficult, he said.

“I looked through the Water For Life information available on the Alberta Environment website and the water act,” said Evans. “You could wade your way through it and understand what they were trying to accomplish from a policy perspective.”

An Alberta Environment staff member also helped facilitate the relationship between CanEra and the Town, he added.

Trevor Redman, co-owner of the Crystal Shores Golf Course and Claude Kolk, owner of Kayben Farms near Okotoks, both have water licences. Crystal Shores has licences for nearly 68,000 cubic metres of water.

Both men said they know little or nothing about the water licence transfer system.

Trevor Redman with his dog Divet at the Crystal Ridge Golf Course. Redman, part owner of the Okotoks golf course, holds a water license from the Sheep River for the irrigation of the course.

“I don’t have any information on it,” said Redman.

The golf course regularly doesn’t use its entire allotment, but transferring a portion of their water isn’t likely, he said.

“You never know when you’d have a drought year and needed it all,” Redman said. “You’d feel foolish if you sold and then you needed it later.”

The Province should be letting all water licence holders know their plan, said Redman.

“They should notify everybody with a water licence,” he said.

Kolk said it is concerning that individuals who had to do little previously to obtain a water licence now can sell them on a market that is largely unresolved.

“The (licences) allocated before when it was easy to do, you just had to sign a paper and you didn’t have to put a lot of money into it, now all of a sudden they are sitting on a little gold mine,” he said.

Kolk said water needs should be prioritized. In Lethbridge, where he grew up, there was a system that gave human needs and agriculture demand for water priority before recreation, for example. He said the same priorities should be applied to the water licence transfer system.

“Who gets the rights to the water?” he questioned.

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