grainswest.com
Sharon McKinnon is the alternate member for the cropping
sector on the Alberta Water Council, a body set up by the
province to implement the Water for Life strategy. She’s directly
involved with efforts to make water sustainability a working
reality for all Albertans. One major initiative that launched in June
2015 is a comprehensive new plan for managing the province’s
wetlands. “In the past,” McKinnon said, “provincial policy was
directed towards draining wetlands to create more arable land
for agriculture.” Wetlands often covered large parts of farmers’
fields, bogging down heavy equipment in the early spring
planting season. Now, that policy is being reversed. “We’re
realizing now how vital those wetlands are for biodiversity,
water retention and flood control,” McKinnon said. After the
disastrous flooding of the Bow River in 2013, inundating much
of Calgary, flood control is now a major concern.
With the Watershed Resiliency and Restoration Program
and the Agricultural Watershed Enhancement Program, the
Alberta government is identifying and prioritizing wetlands
and riparian areas for conservation, and encouraging farmers
and local communities to protect and restore the ones on
their land. “Restoring wetlands can be very straightforward,”
McKinnon said. “By plugging drainage ditches the wetlands
can come right back.” The programs make grants available to
individuals and groups for wetland restoration and water quality
improvement practices.
CHANGING, CONSERVING AND EDUCATING
Even with the new wetland-restoration policies, and with
new drives for sustainable water use by the province’s
farmers, our water is still vulnerable. Part of the problem
stems from the way the province’s water-use licensing system
is structured. Water is primarily allocated on a first-come-
first-served basis, where the holder of an earlier license has
priority over all licenses issued later. In the past, this system of
‘prior allocation’ determined priority for all water users in the
province, and licenses could be held indefinitely. However,
the introduction of the province’s Water Act in 1999 ensured
that domestic and household water users would always have
the highest priority—superseding all existing licenses. The Act
also instituted a term limit for water licenses, most of which
now need to be renewed every five years.
The Act includes clauses for overriding licences during
emergencies, but leaves forward-thinking to prevent
emergencies up to Alberta Environment and Parks, the
ministry that issues the water licences.
The powers given to the government can be major tools.
For example, Alberta Environment and Parks can define water-
use goals for different water sources, and is in the process of
revising and changing a range of these goals for important
bodies of water to encourage conservation. But all these
changes are insufficient unless the people of Alberta are aware
of both what is at stake and what they can do about it. One
of the major initiatives of the Water for Life strategy, and a key
one being pursued by the Alberta Water Council, is fostering
awareness among Albertans about the vulnerability of their
water. The goal is to encourage conservation and prepare
Albertans for changes in how they will have to use water in the
future.
As a first step, the Alberta Water Council has been surveying
the current state of knowledge about water to gauge where
to start new educational efforts. Regional water-use-planning
bodies are also identifying water vulnerabilities and making
them known to the public, along with the triggers that will
start water-conservation measures during droughts and other
water emergencies.
“Drought and floods are facts of life in Alberta,” McKinnon
said. “It’s vital that everyone take an interest in and realize their
individual responsibility for making sure our water is clean and
plentiful for generations to come.”
To reach that sustainable future, it might be useful to talk
to those who know how much we depend on water—our
farmers and ranchers. “If glaciers are shrinking and that natural
reservoir is reducing, we have definite cause for concern,”
Stanford said. “Without water we would have no cities, no oil
sands, no agriculture, no Alberta. We have to protect it.”
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