The City of Calgary is monitoring a forestry operation in Kananaskis Country to determine whether its logging is hurting the city’s water quality or causing added runoff.

Spray Lakes Sawmills, a Cochrane-based company, has the logging rights to a 3,370-square-kilometre chunk of the eastern slopes of the Rockies, near the Bow and Elbow Rivers.

The city is concerned that, because the forest absorbs excess rainwater and releases it slowly into the rivers, logging the area could cause flooding during the spring runoff and lead to lower water levels in the late summer. Deforestation can also cause more dirt, including metals and minerals, to wash directly into rivers, which could cause algae to grow in the city’s reservoirs.

“Every time there’s a new logging plan in our watershed, we want to make sure we’re not affected,” says John Jagorinec, senior water quality analyst for the city.

Under an agreement reached with the provincial government last year, the city is collecting data on the quality and quantity of water entering the rivers to determine if logging is having an effect. If there’s a problem, the province can review and possibly modify Spray Lakes Sawmills’ plan. Since the company started logging last winter, Jagorinec hasn’t seen any problems.

However, Ralph Cartar, University of Calgary biology professor and member of the Bragg Creek Environmental Coalition, believes the logging may already have raised water levels in the Kananaskis River, which flows into the Bow. An area on the shores of Barrier Lake, which is fed by the Kananaskis, experienced some of the worst flooding in its history this year, he says.

“It would be a stretch not to attribute this flood to the logging and road-building upstream,” Cartar says. He and some of this neighbours advocate turning the entire Kananaskis area into a provincial park, a view shared by some of his neighbours.

The province announced earlier this week that it would carve out a new, small park in Kananaskis Country. However, it will consist entirely of land already in the parks system and won’t add any new territory to the protected area, says Tourism, Parks and Recreation department spokesperson Erin Mikaluk.

“I laud (the province) for trying to do something for eastern Kananaskis… but these (protected areas) are infinitesimally small,” says Doug Sephton, a Bragg Creek businessman. He claims the idea of turning the whole area into a park has widespread support. According to an online survey he conducted earlier this year, even some forestry and oil and gas workers would like to see a new park in the Kananaskis.

Sephton and other Bragg Creek residents opposed Spray Lakes Sawmills’ attempts to log the area for several years, concerned that the forestry operation would deter tourism to the area and hurt the local economy. The company further raised their ire last January when it built logging roads on part of the Trans-Canada Trail, a coast-to-coast hiking and biking route.

Spray Lakes, like all other forestry operations in Alberta, is required to replant trees in the areas it logs. Its plan for managing the forest has been vetted by the province. Sustainable Resource Development, the provincial department that oversees forestry, has said logging in the area is necessary to control the spread of mountain pine beetle. The insect has already devastated 13.5 million hectares of forest in British Colombia and has started moving into Alberta.

For the moment, opposition to Spray Lakes Sawmills’ logging has fizzled, says Cartar. However, he believes the community will keep pushing for a park in the coming years as the forestry operations move closer to town. “I think things will start heating up once Spray Lakes starts hauling logs down the Bragg Creek Road,” he says.

Spray Lakes Sawmills could not be reached for comment.