Impacts of Subsurface Agricultural Drainage on Watershed Peak Flows Briefing Paper #1

During and after the 2009 Red River of the North flood, there were numerous public statements inferring that the region's flooding problems were caused by the extensive network of surface and subsurface agricultural drainage systems. Although the statements could well be dismissed as rhetoric or opinion, the fundamental issues and underlying questions posed are valid and have largely been unanswered in the Red River Basin using objective and defendable scientific methods.