The Moose Jaw River Watershed Stewards works together with the city and surrounding rural municipalities to address water conservation, erosion, sedimentation, pollution and species protection.  It often works to fix mistakes of the past, while looking at growing communities.

Speaking at Moose Jaw's Sustainable Community Conference, Tammy Myers spoke about projects that are working well.  One example is the Town of Avonlea which has constructed an engineered wetland that treats their effluent, flows from one cell to another cell and eventually to a wetland.  

"It was such a successful implementation project that other towns and villages have now decided to consider that as part of their lagoon expansion as their communities start to grow."  She added that the longevity of the wetland could be 30 years plus with no maintenance or operational cost, saving money, improving the environment and creating a healthy water source for ducks, fish and aquatic life.

The program manager of the non-profit group shared other encouraging news as well, saying they went fishing and managed to catch some nice, healthy walleye in the Moose Jaw River last year.  "We went out and caught fish along each of the resovoirs within the City of Moose Jaw, we caught jack and walleye and it was nice that the water will eventually drain and the fish just move with it."

Myers admits mercury levels have been an issue in the past, but that wasn't seen in the fish sampled in 2012.  While she says the river system is constantly changing, erosion, sedimentation and bacteria levels are an ongoing issue that keep people from intentionally going for a swim.

"We wade in there a couple of times a year, we do critter dipping, we look at the water bugs and there are healthy water bugs in our river system," Myers says.  "I think the main thing is that there's just a lot of sediment that comes down and makes it murky.  It's hard to step through, it's hard to see through and that's what kind of turns people off of getting into the water."

She added that it's nice that Wakamow Valley is working on bioengineering as their work, as a watershed, doesn't happen without partnerships.  She says they have a significant number of partners in landowners and municipalities as well financial contributions to keep them going.