The Quill Lakes Watershed Association has backed out of its proposal for a Quill Lakes flood mitigation project.

“We were so far away from getting a proposal finished,” chair Kerry Holderness said Monday.

The association had sought to build a 25-kilometre drainage diversion channel to redirect surface water from Kutawagan Lake and Pel Lake towards Last Mountain Lake.

Hydrology, water modeling and water salinity studies were not completed in time for construction to begin before this year’s spring run off, he said.

There has been a lot of misunderstanding about the diversion project, such as the  Saskatchewan Alliance for Water Sustainability concerns about the salt content of the water from the Quill Lakes going into Last Mountain Lake, he said.

That group was under the mistaken impression that his group wanted to lower the entire Quill Lakes area by 0.6 metres - when they were only going to lower a small water body in the Kutawagan and Pell Lake area, a “drop in the bucket for the Quill Lakes,” he said.

The association still has work it has to do within the watershed, and Holderness said those plans would be made public later.

Holderness declined to comment on a CBC story in which University of Saskatchewan law professor Jason MacLean said emails between the watershed association and the environment ministry showed "a very cozy, collaborative relationship."

Holderness said there was no relationship between the timing of that story and the group’s announcement on the same day.

“We’ve been planning this for quite some time.”