Wascana & Upper Qu’Appelle Watersheds Association
Taking Responsibility Inc.
Wascana & Upper Qu’Appelle Watersheds Association Taking Responsibility (WUQWATR) is a non-profit organization with a focus on promoting watershed stewardship through programming, communications, and initiatives to help protect our surface and ground waters. Our watershed boundaries extend from Regina to Humboldt and from Central Butte to Tyvan, encompassing 109 communities in a total area of 23,443 km², making us one of the largest watershed stewardship groups in Saskatchewan. We aim to ensure sustainable, healthy watersheds, and work with our members, agricultural producers, government, industry, researchers, and more to accomplish this.
WUQWATR delivers programming to landowners and municipalities within our watersheds. Our partners include the Water Security Agency, Ministry of Agriculture, ALUS Canada, the Saskatchewan Association of Watersheds (SAW), and various other Saskatchewan watershed groups. Together we promote source water protection, agricultural water management, flood and drought preparedness, and climate change initiatives. The Canadian Agricultural Partnership (CAP) and ALUS are the two main programs delivered by WUQWATR. Both are offered to producers in our watershed and involve financial assistance and environmental benefits.
Founded in 2008, we have been delivering watershed plans and programs ever since. In the beginning, we were guided by our Source Water Protection Plan. Now the the majority of the action items have been completed, we have developed a Strategic Plan which was updated in 2021 to help us achieve our vision. If you would like a copy of either of these documents, please email us at info@wuqwatr.ca.
This plan was developed by community members from our four Sub-Watersheds: Lanigan/Manitou, Last Mountain Lake, Qu’Appelle River, and Wascana Creek working with the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority and the support of technical experts.
“Getting to the Source” was completed and published in March 2008, and WUQWATR was then created to ensure that the recommendations developed by the community were implemented.