Dropping river levels put damper on campsite excitement

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/08/2021 (1703 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Georges Beaudry has taken to naming the exposed rocks in the Roseau River.

He’s co-owned a 200-acre private campsite (Oroseau Rapids Park) south of St. Malo for 21 years. Through the seasons, visitors have brought inner tubes, kayaks and rafts to the valley site to use in the nearby rapids.

This year, amid ongoing drought, the river seems to be more rock and algae than current; it’s disappearing, Beaudry says.

“It’s a completely different river altogether,” he said Thursday. “Some people that come here, they’re astonished. They’re used to seeing a running river with rapids, and they come here with their tubes… but there’s no water.”

There are eight significant rapids within a kilometre of river close to Oroseau, some 80 km south of Winnipeg, Beaudry said. Between those are natural pools used for water sports.

“The pools are becoming swamps, basically,” he said. “There’s no water movement at all.”

On Thursday, the station monitoring Roseau River east of Dominion City registered water levels at 240.2 m, according to the federal government’s website. The average level in August 2016 was 241.2 m.

The station monitoring Roseau River at Gardenton registered a water level of 292.2 m Thursday, down from the 294 m average in July 2016 (August’s level wasn’t available).

In Sprague, one of the closest weather stations to the Roseau River, 19.8 millimetres of rain fell in July. The average for July between 1981 and 2010 was 104.5 mm.

The dried-up river has forced Beaudry to rethink his business model.

“People are in the water all the time,” he said. “If there’s no water, there’s no reason for them to actually come.”

Currently, Beaudry rents the entire acreage to one group at a time. However, he may have to divide the space into multiple campsites and allow for individuals and smaller groups to rent on the same days, he said.

“I’m not sure we want to do that, but if we have a few more years like this… it’s not going to be worth opening.”

Beaudry is worried future severe weather will permanently transform portions of Roseau River into swamp.

“Climate and our existence is intertwined,” he said. “I don’t think people make those connections enough.”

Meanwhile, the Shell River, near Asessippi Beach & Campground, is the lowest Rick Goraluk says he’s ever seen.

Goraluk has co-owned the camping hub some 350 km northwest of Winnipeg for 14 years. Normally, he would take customers with tubes 2.5 km up river; they’d spend an hour-and-a-half floating back down.

Now, “the rocks are sticking out too much,” Goraluk said. “You can’t even get through — you’d have to basically jump off your tubes and push them through the rocks.”

He said swimming in the river is good for children because it’s so shallow. Otherwise, aquatic enthusiasts are out of luck.

A near-dry river is also a problem at Brokenhead River Park, east of Beausejour, according to co-owner Kurtis Gafka: “There’s pretty much no water left.”

“If it does start to be a trend, then… people might look elsewhere,” Gafka said. “The only saving grace for us is it’s not localized. This is a very widespread drought.”

The concern is indeed not just local — some of Manitoba’s rivers feed from watersheds in other provinces and states, such as North Dakota, which are suffering droughts, too, according to Natalie Hasell, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Most of southern Manitoba has seen less than 100 mm of precipitation in the last six months.

“There hasn’t been a lot of rain locally, and there hasn’t been a lot of rain upstream to fill the watershed(s), so it should not, therefore, be surprising… that water levels are low in the rivers,” she said.

Weather variability has noticeably increased, Hasell added.

“It would seem that we’ve had the top-five driest, and the top-five wettest… years in the last 10 to 15 years,” she said. “The years are not just dry, they’re very dry. The years are not just wet, they’re very wet.”

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca