At an annual general meeting in Lethbridge for the largest irrigation district in Canada, it’s standing room only.

These AGMs for the St. Mary River Irrigation District, located in southern Alberta, are normally sleepy affairs. But this year is different as the province is staring down challenging drought conditions.

What’s expected today is big news for the 200-odd people filing into the room, some wearing jackets bearing the names of their respective operations.

Semi-arid southern Alberta, which relies heavily on irrigation, is expected to be hit with particular challenges — and new data from Environment and Climate Change Canada paints a striking picture of Canada’s Prairies.

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    The district, responsible for delivering irrigation water to farmers in southern Alberta, launches a PowerPoint presentation to lay out the challenges ahead.

    The brown area in the photo is very concerning because it means virtually zero to no snowpack in an expanse that extends across the Prairies, said Tricia Stadnyk, a professor and Canada Research Chair in hydrologic modelling with the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering.

    In the room at the St. Mary River Irrigation District AGM, organizers explain that supply in the area is lower compared with last year, with a dry winter affecting snowpack and reservoir storage.

    But Westwood said the district is confident that even though southern Alberta is on a path to irrigation expansion, it’s being done through infrastructure projects leading to strong water savings.

    Stadnyk, the Canada Research Chair in hydrologic modelling with the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering, says it’s virtually certain that Alberta will no longer have glacier inflow in the future — the only question is when this will occur, whether that’s in 2030 or 2050.

    “The last thing we would want as a province as a whole is to spend millions of dollars, if not billions, retrofitting for irrigation expansion, only to find that the water isn’t there to fill the canals or the pipes,” she said.

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