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Water Measurement Demonstration and Testing Facility


With Alberta’s supply of available irrigation water being stretched to an ever-increasing limit, the irrigation industry has become much more proactive in recognizing the need for better water management through improved control and measurement.

The “Water Measurement Demonstration and Testing Facility” is an initiative of the Basin Water Management Branch of Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD), to support the industry’s move to adopting enhanced water control and measurement systems.

This project has been made possible through the partnership contributions by many Alberta companies and agencies. The facility now offers the opportunity to:

  1. Support applied research into new flow measurement and control techniques that can be applicable to southern Alberta conditions
  2. Provide controlled testing of new measurement technologies to evaluate proposed equipment, systems or solutions
  3. Provide a facility for the demonstration of various flow measurement and control techniques, systems and equipment
  4. Provide a “benchmark” facility where the irrigation industry can have their own flow measurement equipment tested for accuracy and calibrated against more high-cost high accuracy flow measurement components
  5. Support the testing and demonstration of water quality monitoring and sampling equipment

The site consists of a recirculating water conveyance system. Both the pipeline and open channel infrastructure are accessible for evaluating flow measurement technologies.

Along the pipeline, there are several measurement and control points as well as access vaults to the buried pipeline. This allows for both the temporary and permanent installation of various pipeline flow measurement devices that can be tested, demonstrated or calibrated.

The open channel section of the project contains six precast concrete panel control structures, four of which allow for the temporary “drop-in / lift-out” installation of a wide variety of flow control and measurement components, be they various types of weirs, flumes or the like. The other two structures have been fitted with automated control gates, which control water levels for diversions into simulated farm delivery turnouts or lateral channels.

View the demo canal brochure