Next time you fill a glass of cool, clear water from the tap, consider the source. Is it from a river or a well?
Premier Ed Stelmach, while staunchly defending the provincial government’s land-use legislation at a cattle producers conference in Red Deer last week, stressed the importance of Alberta’s water resources.
Stelmach said the land-use policies under fire by critics are to accommodate another boom in the Edmonton-Calgary corridor, and built around the province’s seven watersheds to quench the thirst.
“Water is critical,” he said. “We have to make those (land-use) decisions today, in terms of how we conserve water.”
The flowing rivers aside, what about our vital groundwater resources?
Nearly 10 million Canadians — almost a third of the population, including about 80 per cent of the rural population, and many small- to medium-sized municipalities — rely on groundwater for their everyday needs.
Yet its management is largely ignored and prompt action is a priority, says a recent study by the C.D. Howe Institute, Protecting Groundwater: The Invisible but Vital Resource.
“Canadians living in large cities, and most government officials tend to ignore groundwater and its management,” resulting in a “fragmented knowledge of groundwater locations, their quantity, quality and how groundwater supplies are changing over time in Canada,” said the report’s author, internationally respected James P. Bruce, former chair of the Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel on Groundwater.
How could governments be so obtuse in managing this invisible, vital resource?
A recent Ipsos-Reid poll showed that Canadians consider water to be the country’s most important natural resource — more important than oil or natural gas.
Yet the “oil and gas reservoirs in this country are better understood than the groundwater reservoirs . . . a readily available database for groundwater is lacking,”
That should be a major concern in rural Central Alberta, which has experienced a stampede on shallow drilling for methane gas. Some area landowners at public meetings were that adamant their groundwater supplies have been seriously affected by the drillings.
The growing practice of fracturing to release natural gas “poses a potential threat to groundwater, especially where insufficient hydro-geological knowledge is unavailable,” wrote Bruce.
Landowners are asking if the province possesses such knowledge, but have yet to receive convincing answers.
Several areas across Canada are experiencing declining groundwater tables, which are increasingly unable to quench the thirsts of urban expansion.
The Lacombe/Ponoka region is used as an example in the report.
According to reports published in the Advocate, at least 12 municipalities in north and east Central Alberta relying on wells have starved groundwater supplies and now require water piped in from the Red Deer River.
Natural Resources Canada has developed a geological survey of groundwater, but some provinces don’t contribute with measurement programs to provide data, says the report. “Data on groundwater quality and quantity, and on actual uses are spotty, at best.”
Is Alberta contributing?
The study also concludes that we cannot dismiss agriculture or big industry as players in diminishing groundwater quality in some areas of Canada.
Alberta communities have faced “boil first” warnings.
Last year, Condor School’s well water supply was off limits after unsafe levels of bacteria were discovered. The Wildrose School Division took precautionary measures at other schools relying on well water.
What’s the source of this contamination?
Responsible groundwater management appears to be a relatively new concept that demands competent studies. With all its land-use policies to accommodate growth, what does the Alberta government have in place to protect this precious, invisible resource coming out of the taps?
Rick Zemanek is an Advocate editor.