St. Mary River Irrigation District

We, the staff and Board at the St. Mary River Irrigation District (SMRID), are fiercely proud that we support so much of the economic, agricultural, and environmental activities in Southern Alberta. We are dedicated to our vision of supporting communities, environment, and agriculture in the area and to our mission to provide for future generations. We strive to be committed citizens in Southern Alberta and are proud of the place we have in the history of irrigation and its positive impacts on the lives of citizens and our place in the past, present, and future of the area. In order to maintain the delivery of water through a complex system of reservoirs, canals and pipelines to the many water users who are within our District, we have a staff of over 100 comprising full-time and part-time field and office staff in Lethbridge, Taber and Bow Island. These staff are responsible for the engineering, operations and administration of the District. We have eight licenses to divert water from the St. Mary, Waterton and Belly rivers. The volume of our allowable diversion is 880,000 ac/ft; on average we divert around 60% of our total license. Our licenses not only allow water for irrigation but for other uses such as municipal, industrial, recreational and environmental; it must be noted though that we will not allow water to be used for well injection. Due to the investment of millions of dollars by the District and irrigators to improve the efficiency of transport and application of water to crops, the District has seen water volumes reduce while irrigated acreage increase.