Southern Alberta irrigators just got a bigger tap, as reservoirs hold steady through the heat

Southern Alberta's summer has been hot enough to make reservoirs sweat, but according to the region's biggest irrigation district, the system is holding up just fine — and farmers are about to get more water to work with.

The St. Mary River Irrigation District (SMRID) says its board of directors has approved a motion to raise farm-gate allocation to 17 inches for the 2026 irrigation season, effective immediately, according to an update posted to irrigators by general manager David Westwood.

The increase comes even as demand has climbed sharply. Sustained heat in recent weeks pushed irrigation use up across the district, drawing down reservoirs that had been sitting close to full supply through most of the spring. The St. Mary Headworks Reservoirs — a combination of the Waterton, St. Mary and Ridge reservoirs — are currently at 88 per cent of their irrigation storage capacity, holding 423,200 acre-feet of water. SMRID's own reservoirs are sitting at 80 per cent, with 261,100 acre-feet in storage.

Despite the summer heat wave, water use across the broader St. Mary Project is tracking at roughly 330,000 acre-feet as of late July — comfortably within the historical range for this point in the season, the district says. A wetter-than-usual June had suppressed demand early on, before the recent hot spell caught things back up.

For a district that supplies water to a substantial share of southern Alberta's irrigated farmland, an allocation bump in the middle of peak growing season is meaningful news for producers trying to get crops through the last stretch of summer heat.

SMRID says it will continue providing monthly updates to irrigators through the growing season, with the next one expected around August 28.

The full technical update, including reservoir storage graphics, is available on SMRID's website.