Saskatoon's Prairie Lily riverboat is set to sail again after the Gardiner Dam announced increased outflows for early and mid-June, providing a much-needed boost to water levels on the South Saskatchewan River.
A Season of Uncertainty
After weeks of erratic water levels and frustrating miscommunication, the Prairie Lily is back in bloom. The iconic riverboat, under new ownership from Stephanie Simonot, was supposed to launch for the season in mid-May following government reassurances about river levels that grounded the vessel for all of last season.
Instead, Senior Captain and former co-owner Mike Steckhan said the Prairie Lily sailed for one solid weekend before water outflow was suddenly halved in a shocking and uncommunicated event. From 240 cubic metres per second (m³/s) — the expected flow rate from Gardiner Dam — “the river suddenly dropped like mad to 120 (m³/s), which means they had two turbines running and they turned one right off,” Steckhan said. When it happened, the Prairie Lily was out on the river and barely made it back to shore.
Miscommunication and Recovery
Though staff at the Water Security Agency (WSA), which oversees outflow, “have been pretty good . . . about letting people know what’s happening (with water levels),” Steckhan said in this case, they “dropped the ball.” “They just forgot, or whatever, to tell us.” A follow-up email from the WSA to Prairie Lily management allegedly acknowledged this miscommunication, but the agency was less forthcoming in correspondence with the StarPhoenix.
“WSA staff have met with the operators of the Prairie Lilly [sic] and informed them of the operating plan,” wrote Patrick Boyle, director of communications and client service. “WSA also provides regular updates to water levels on the website, including real time flow monitoring data from hundreds of monitoring stations in the province, as well as a regular rotating 10 Day Forecast.”
Prairie Lily management was later told that reduced outflows would continue until early June, which caused all scheduled cruises up to and including June 4 to be cancelled. Moreover, ticket sales for cruises scheduled between June 5 and June 18 were suspended.
A Welcome Change
But just as suddenly as Gardiner Dam taketh away, it giveth. On Thursday, the WSA announced its plan to open spillway gates to increase outflows from roughly 280 m³/s to 700 m³/s, which surprised Steckhan like the reduction did a week and a half prior. This time, of course, it was a good surprise.
“Their press release is pretty much exactly what we’ve been asking for for essentially two and a half years now,” Steckhan said. “(This outflow) is actually a flush, so enough water (is) coming through that it will actually clean the valley out. Remember, we’ve had a five-year drought, and for five years they did not open a spillway on that dam.”
Now, thanks to heavy rainfall and mountain runoff in Alberta that precipitated this decision, the South Saskatchewan River should return to “its normal natural state” and the Prairie Lily “should be going great guns for the whole summer.”
