Pipelines falling into place as BRID builds a closed system

Posted on September 30, 2024 by Vauxhall Advance

By Cal Braid
Vauxhall Advance
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Bow River Irrigation District General Manager Richard Phillips gave an update of the projects that the District has undertaken to improve the efficiency of its water delivery system. The standout projects involve building a new reservoir – the Deadhorse Coulee – and installing new pipelines.

The new pipelines will replace a number of open canals in the district, reducing spill and conserving the land’s most valuable resource. The pipelines – BK-1, BK-2, BK-2-2 and BK-3 – are geographically sort of midway between Vauxhall and Lost Lake. BK-2-2 is right beside Lost Lake and BK-3 is a little closer to Lost Lake than to Vauxhall and north of the main canal.

 Last year, Phillips said that by the spring of 2027, the entire area will have closed pipelines, and project has plugged along through 2024. “With every open canal, you put water in at the top and if you don’t pick it up it spills out at the bottom. It’s running downhill and there’s no way to stop that water. So every open canal has spill, or return flow,  going out the bottom end so it’s returning to the river. When you replace an open canal with a closed pipeline, there’s nothing spilling out of the bottom end of the pipeline. So you eliminate a lot of that spill water which we call return flow,” Phillips said at the time.

 The BK pipelines are works in progress, and the progress is steady.  “We’re moving along nicely on that,” he said earlier this month. “That project involves three really big pipelines that originate from our main canal, and then a smaller pipeline that’ll be pumped off Lost Lake. So this year, the first pipeline was in operation, and that was great. You know, this winter, we’re working on it and last year we also did most of the work on the little pumped pipeline from Lost Lake.”

 “This year, we’re working on the middle pipeline of the big three off the main canal. And we actually started putting pipe in the ground today. So we’re off and running already, and we’ve got massive piles of pipe on the ground, lots of material. We’re hitting it hard and fast and early. And, you know, hopefully by spring, we’ve got it done, but we’ve told the farmers that we’re not guaranteeing that we’ll have it done by spring, because there’s so much involved and you just don’t know what the weather is going to look like through the winter. But, like I say, we’re off to a great start there.”

He said it’s rare to be putting pipe in the ground on Sept. 9, and the District is excited about its forward motion. Land acquisition is part of the process and nearly all of the easements have now been signed. “Pipelines are pretty easy. Maybe we’ve still got one farmer to sign, but it’s just a matter of getting to everybody. Everybody’s always happy to see pipelines. There’s no opposition. It’s not like a reservoir, where people are actually losing land. Yeah, some people on the reservoir are happy to sell land to the District. Others are reluctant, and understandably so. The pipelines, everybody’s always happy to see the pipeline coming. It improves the district tremendously for the farmers on the pipeline.”