The Water in Southern Alberta podcast miniseries covers topics such as irrigation, resource extraction, water security, and climate change, featuring experts like Dr. Brad Stelfox and Dr. David Swann. The series seeks feedback to provide summaries and recommendations for legislative change.
This episode features Cheryl Bradley, Judy Stewart, and David Barrett who bring diverse expertise in environmental management, law, and aquatic health. Cheryl Bradley has been involved in water management planning in southern Alberta for decades, focusing on river conservation. Judy Stewart, a retired lawyer and poet, emphasizes the importance of water management in municipal planning. David Barrett, a researcher at the University of Calgary, studies aquatic ecosystems and advocates for water protection.
The podcast discusses complex water management issues, including the impact of irrigation on river health, the role of municipalities in land use planning, and the need for comprehensive data collection to monitor water quality and flow. Concerns are raised about recent amendments to the Water Act, which may increase director discretion and affect water conservation efforts.
Introductions to Cheryl Bradley and Dr. Judy Stewart, and a Re-introduction of David Barrett
Welcome to The Gravity Well Podcast with me, Jenny Yeremiy. I host the gravity well to celebrate and share the stories of people looking to empower others with the knowledge and skills required to reestablish stability in our communities. My mission is to work through heavy issues in conversation and process in order to lighten the load. I acknowledge that I live on the traditional territories of Treaty 7 and Metis districts 5 and 6. The treaties and self-governance agreements established by indigenous peoples who are created to honour the laws of the land, maintain balance with nature, and give back to uphold reciprocal relationships. This knowledge and intention are what guide the Gravity Well conversations. I ask for genuine dialogue, real hearts, and openness to different perspectives. This is your invitation to find common ground with me. Positions taken by participants either individually or collectively do not necessarily represent those of the gravity well. This podcast is dedicated to the natural world, our children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and all future generations. The Gravity Well is on YouTube and streaming wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you see and hear, remember to like and subscribe.
Good afternoon, Bob. How are you today?
Bob:
Pretty good. And you, Jenny?
Jenny:
I’m well, thank you. Yes, I’m excited. This just keeps getting better. We’ve been through the first half of this In May, we did seven episodes. We spoke about irrigation, the history of irrigation, resource extraction, the water act and licence transfer system, water modelling, watershed and lake stewardship, dry land, irrigated, ranch, land, farming and insurance. And then we returned just this month to talk with Dr. Brad Stel Fox. We spoke about land use limits, Dr. David Soin. We discussed coping with climate change. Yesterday we met with David Swan and Jason Unger to talk about water security. Encourage everyone to listen to each of those podcasts. We are looking for feedback and input for all that we want to do with this work. At the end of the day, we want to provide a summary, a written summary, and some recommendations to people that are focused in these areas and have the power to potentially make enact change in legislation. Was that a good summary of what we’re up to, Bob?
Bob:
That’s great, Jenny.
Jenny:
Wonderful. Okay. Just a reminder to everyone, please like and subscribe to The Gravity Well so that the time and effort that people put into this is worthwhile. It does matter you paying intention and engaging and sharing this with your community. Thank you for that. Alright, let’s get going here today. I am super excited to invite first off, Cheryl Bradley to the stage. Thank you so much for being with us, Cheryl.
Cheryl:
Thank you very much for having me. Jenny and Bob, this is a very important topic in southern Alberta.
Jenny:
Thank you. Cheryl has represented environmental interest in numerous water and watershed management planning processes in southern Alberta for four decades. She has also engaged in regulatory processes regarding water allocation decisions. She began her career as a professional biologist studying cottonwood forests along the rivers in southern Alberta, and has facilitated the development and strategy for their conservation. Cheryl lives in Lethbridge now, and I’m proud to say I had your husband on the show last year to speak about water and restoration in Alberta. It’s just such a pleasure to meet you both and to have the opportunity to speak with you. Thank you for being here.
Cheryl:
Thank you.
Jenny:
Can you offer a little bit more of your background? What brought you into this work before we bring the others through?
Cheryl:
It’s a love of rivers. I love to paddle rivers and I have paddled a lot of rivers in southern Alberta and I enjoy healthy wild places. I really spend a fair bit of time in the eastern slopes, which is the headwaters, which is where 80% of the flow in our rivers comes from. And I just love to think about the connections of rivers flows and the life that’s in them and along them because they’re intimately connected and I enjoy trying to understand that.
Jenny:
Wonderful, wonderful. Okay, I’m going to go ahead and bring on our next guest. We welcome Dr. Judy Stewart to the stage now. Thank you for being here, Judy. I’m just going to switch the settings here. We’ve got Whoops. No, I want to do this one. That’s what it was. Excellent. I’ll bring myself here. Okay. Thank you Judy for being here. Judy was a research fellow at the Canadian Institute of Resource Law and is now the chair of the Policy and Legislative Committee for the Bow River Basin Watershed Council. She’s a retired lawyer and is now a poet and lives in Cochrane. Welcome to the studio. Judy, would you please elaborate a little bit on what brought you into this work for us, please?
Judy:
I guess I spent most of my life as a child in water. I’ve been immersed in water my entire life. As you say, I live in Cochrane and the beautiful bow river flows by who could not want to be involved in water management activities. I’ve been very, very blessed my entire life with having connections to water and the watersheds that I live in. And I see this as an opportunity to give back something of the way I’ve lived my entire life to society and especially to my community. It’s something I live with every day and I enjoy. I am not a paddler, I’m not a swimmer, but I certainly spent a lot of time in water getting thrown in there and playing in it. We didn’t have lakes where I grew up. What we had was some rivers and creeks and ponds, dump ponds and woodlands and swamps. I grew up in Quebec where there’s lots of swamps, and it’s a different immersion than what Cheryl’s talking about. I guess that’s what you could say. I’ve had to defend water bodies my entire career as a lawyer. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find mechanisms and legal platforms to protect the water bodies in my community and elsewhere. I think that’s a launching pad for everything else I have to say today.
Jenny:
Incredible. I’ve had the opportunity to see you, Judy, at work in the Bow River Basin Council meeting. You held a meeting, I believe it was in May of last year when we were very concerned about water shortages and it was very well run. It was probably one of the best meetings I’ve been to in that. Thank you for everybody who keeps in this work as you retire so vital for the knowledge to be ongoing, and I appreciate you learning as we go. Thank you so much. Okay, lastly, I’m happy to welcome David Barrett to the stage. Thank you so much for being here, David. David actually participated, this is a return of David to the stage here. He participated in the series I did with the Calgary Environmental Roundtable for the municipal election. Unfortunately, David did not get into a position, but obviously he’s doing very important work at the U of C, I’m really excited to talk about that.
David is a researcher who’s focused on the aquatic health. He manages the aquatic ecology lab where they undertake a wide range of research, including looking at the impacts of municipal wastewater on the Basil food web of the Beau River. And he has a number of different projects. He’s done a number of different projects, excuse me, in the Athabasca oil sands region and other cold lake aquatic research. I’m sure you and I need to go for lunch and talk about that. But instead, can you please elaborate a little more on what brought you into this work, David, and yeah, just anything else you’d like to add.
David:
Absolutely. Yeah, similar to Judy and Cheryl, I’ve long been immersed or around water. I’ve worked in rivers, lakes, ponds, wetlands, the whole gamut. I’ve been really privileged that I’ve had the opportunity to work in the Arctic in southern Alberta, in BC, all around. And it’s just so important. Water is life and if we do not protect that, if we are not advocating for water, there’s so many just different knock on effects that happen after that. I’m really excited. I said to you, Jenny, I think my expertise is dwarfed by that of Judy and Cheryl. I am excited to also be taking in a lot. I’ve also been involved with the Bow River Basin Council on state of the watershed reporting and a few other things. I’m also deeply immersed in this world.
Jenny:
Wonderful. Yes, I love how humble everybody is in this work too. It’s impressive. Okay, I’m going to let Bob take over here. Bob, you can lead us off with our first questions, please.
What are the water conservation objectives?
Bob (00:10:01):
Okay. Let me get down to a basic acronym problem. Cheryl, can you tell me the difference between WCO’s, IF’s, all the other acronyms that are out there that people use to deal with the aquatic and riparian environment?
Cheryl:
Well, I’ll try. I wouldn’t get caught up on the acronyms, but we do use them in water management in Alberta. The first attempt we had to keep flows in the rivers to make sure we kept rivers flowing was to define what are called instream objectives. And they were a guideline for operators of dams and diversions in the 1950s, sixties, seventies when there was a lot of dam construction on rivers going on in Alberta. Those instream objectives, we call them iOS as an acronym, are minimum flows that need to be released through a dam to either allow for assimilation of wastewater past municipal communities. And in two instances, they were defined to be what we call the 80% fish rule curve that protects habitat for fish. It’s a minimal protection so that fish don’t die in rivers. And those instream objectives apply on the old man river below the old man dam and on the Bow River from above Bassano Reservoir where we have prime trout fisheries.
They are the minimum that you need to be able to assimilate waste and in some situations keep fish alive. Those are instream objectives. Instream flow needs were something that we started to evaluate and use in the early two thousands as we were developing as those Saskatchewan River Basin and water Management plan. And they’re an integrated aquatic ecosystem need. They consider that what you need to maintain the river channel, which is a variety of flows. You have need to have flood flows and then you don’t want to dry out the channel completely. They considered water quality. What aspects of the flows would address diluting pollution and keeping the river of a good quality? They look at it riparian vegetation. When I say riparian, that’s the plants that grow along the river in the green zone. They roots benefit from being able to get water that the river provides.
And they also looked at fish habitat. That’s the instream flow need. And what was determined by a group of very competent scientists who were experts in channel maintenance, fish habitat, water quality, and riparian vegetation, they determined that the rivers should have about 80 to 85% of their natural flow throughout the year. When there’s high flow, you get 80%. When it’s a low flow, you have 80%, but also we sometimes need to make the minimum flow or that low flow higher then the 80% because of the pollution that we’re putting into the river. These are the ideal flows that we would be managing to keep in the river. The water conservation objective is defined in the water act, which was revised in the 2000 and it’s a compromise. The water conservation objectives are developed through multi-stakeholder consultation as part of a river basin water management planning process.
And they’re a combination of what ecologically science-based instream flow needs are and what society demands for our uses of water. For example, in the Saskatchewan River Basin water management plan, water conservation objectives were defined as 45% of natural flow. They’re better than instream objectives, but they’re well below instream flow needs. But it was determined that that was what we could reasonably try to achieve given how much water we had extracted from the river. There’s no guarantee that the river will stay healthy with the water conservation objective, but it would be a great improvement over managing our rivers as instream objectives. The Saskatchewan River Basin and Water Management Plan sets water conservation objectives as something we should aspire to achieve in the future. Does that answer your question, Bob?
Bob:
That’s an excellent description of some fairly complicated acronyms and a complicated process that’s very helpful. Now, I don’t know if I should give this one to Cheryl or Judy because it’s a legal question, but it’s also an environmental question. The WCO have something to do with the transfer system that’s out there where people can buy water rights. How does that work with the water conservation objectives?
Jenny:
Are you able to speak to that, Judy?
Judy:
I can tell you water conservation objectives are considered when the government does a water transfer approval. Certainly they look at the applications with a fine tooth cone, make sure that the water conservation objectives is one of the matters and factors that have to be considered. I’m not sure if the water conservation objective is always a adhere to or followed, and I’m not sure if the monitoring and reporting on water conservation objectives, whether they’ve been able to achieve them once the licence has been issued. I’m not sure how that falls through. But often the water conservation objective becomes a condition that is in the transfer agreement and it’s also a condition that you see in every single licence, granted under the director everywhere across the province. Whatever that water conservation objective is becomes a condition of approval. But I’ll let Cheryl correct me on anything I’ve said here that’s out of line.
Cheryl:
Well, I think you’ve represented it accurately. Judy Water, the only tool that we were given in the South Saskatchewan River basin and water management plan to restore flows to rivers was what we called conservation holdbacks
On when licences were transferred. Every time there’s a transfer, the director can take 10% of the volume transferred and put it under a water conservation objective licence that should stay in the river. Now that’s the only tool that we have. And that tool has not been effective. It’s way less than 1% of mean annual flow has been restored to the rivers based on taking holdbacks on transfers to meet a water conservation objective. And I should say that water conservation objectives were not a condition on licences that were held before. The water management plan was approved in 2006, and when the plan was approved, the basin was closed to any new licences. Essentially all the licences in the South Saskatchewan River Basin do not have to meet the water conservation objective.
Bob:
In terms of that 10%, it seems like they haven’t been doing a very good job of even taking that 10%. I know that in the old man on average, it’s about 5% that they’ve taken out of those transfers. Despite the fact, if I’m correct, Judy, the current act says that you take the 10% unless there’s some compelling need for not taking it, that basically the 10% is the default setting. And it seems like they’re finding lots of exceptions to that.
Judy:
You’re right about that, Bob. The government hasn’t always taken into the 10% and there is no requirement to take it. It’s something that’s negotiated these days. And what Cheryl was explaining is very, very important because the licences that were issued years and years ago, for example, to the irrigation districts, didn’t have this wonderful WCO that we negotiated during our consultations over the closure of the basin and the creation South Saskatchewan Management Fund. But what is important to bring out is that when water is transferred, the transferee then has a WCO imposed on the transfer. The transfer might have conditions that are quite a little bit different than what the original recent show. It’s very complex. The director has to go through all of these negotiations and through the public process dealing with the transfer upstream or downstream and the use of the water that’s going to be made. And I think quite frankly, Bob, the transfer system and all the permutations and the contribution holdbacks and whether they’re effective or not, that is subject matter for a completely different discussion because it is complex and you almost need a director to help us understand how these approvals are given. And one of the things I did,
Bob:
Judy, Judy, Judy, we had a previous podcast on the transfer system with a person who deals with transfers as well as Arlene Kwasniak. I was trying to get at this issue of the compelling need for not taking the 10%. And David, I gather that you’ve been working to a certain extent on these water amendments and they aren’t going to change that criteria, aren’t they?
David:
I was just going to flag that actually in April of this year, they removed the requirement on most of the water licences for that holdback. It’s now unclear what decisions are leading to any back being imposed the amendments, the Water Act amendments, and I would defer to Judy and legal experts, but from what I understand are giving a lot more ability for the director’s discretion, essentially amendments as opposed to saying you shall or environmental protected areas shall do this. A lot more of that discretion is being moved to the administration side of government for better or for worse. But I did just want to flag to that 10% holdback on most transfers is actually being removed as of April. And there is, as Judy was saying, general mentioned too, the efficiency or effectiveness I should say, of those holdbacks as a whole different kettle of fish. If you’re holding back 10% on a tiny water licence, can you even measure that? Volume is a big question, but again, that’s perhaps a different discussion. Okay.
Bob:
Jenny, I think this leads to a question about the rights of Rivers.
What are the data gaps in water quality and quantity monitoring and objectives
Jenny (00:24:26):
Wonderful. Yes, let’s get into that. Actually, I wonder, I’m going to let David potentially lead off this question and then I’ll get to Judy, but my thoughts are around, can we talk about data gaps or some of the gaps that we know about with respect to the legal system so that we can then talk about what are some ways that we can apply some new types of legislation?
David:
Sure. Again, this is a broad thing that I’ll try to touch on in a number of factors. First and foremost, I do want to emphasize that predominantly our water management system is very western science based. It’s very much this value, this water quality parameter needs to not cross this threshold. There are, I should say, development of both aboriginal flow needs that are actually part of the legislation up in the Peace— Athabasca area or the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan, I believe has aboriginal base flow or extreme flow requirements. It’s entering into the conversation, but again, most of our discussions about what data we need to collect are really, really heavily based in western science methods. That’s a gap. I think initially we do need to be working with partners, communities, indigenous communities that have different forms of data that can be used in this decision making process in the South Saskatchewan. There’s some areas that are really strong. I am based here in Mohkinstsis, in the City of Calgary. The City of Calgary does have a very extensive watershed monitoring team, and I actually, I always sing their praises. They’re doing work well beyond the City of Calgary as far as again, western data science collection. They do some excellent work on that front. Still isolated though, right? It’s still very concentrated in and predominantly upstream of Calgary.
We haven’t done a lot, the province, I should say, hasn’t done a lot on say that riparian area, and Cheryl can talk way more about that than I could. But as far as say macrophytes, the plants growing at the edge of the river, mapping, understanding how those are shifting over the years, how they’re impacted by flow, that kind of thing has been done very sporadically, I guess is the best way to put it. It’s often relying on outside partners to conduct it, right? Whether that be academics, whether that be community organizations, water stewardship groups, Alberta somewhat uniquely, really heavily relies on a lot of these watershed stewardship groups to complete some other, to fill in the gaps I guess on a lot of this, which provides some really interesting opportunities for that community input, but also can lead to some challenges with consistency. I’ll stop there, Jenny, unless you have specific other points and I’ll let the others jump in and add more.
Jenny:
Yeah, I was wondering about the data quality issue and Cheryl, I can potentially flip this to you, but again, I’m peripherally a part of the Bow River Basin Watershed Council, one of the committees, which is the coordinating committee. I get to hear what everybody’s doing in the southern part of Alberta. And one of the comments was around we don’t really have good well monitoring data for quality extensively. In fact, there are several gaps. I wonder, Cheryl, can you speak about, I hope you said water quality was one of the things you did want to talk about. If I’ve mistaken it, let me know.
Cheryl:
Yeah, water quality isn’t my forte, but I do know the opposite. I do know that you need sufficient flow in a river to keep it alive.
My focus over much of my involvement in water management planning has been understanding that and helping with others understand that we cannot separate the water from the living system, but we do it all the time. We look at water as a resource that we can pull out of a river or withdraw from a lake and use it and put it to our use without understanding how that’s impacting the river. One of the fundamental measures of health of the aquatic ecosystem, including the riparian ecosystem is the flow. We do do constant flow monitoring from a couple of dozen flow monitoring stations in the South Saskatchewan River Basin. We do keep that data. The problem is that when are shrinking the rivers and we’re measuring their demise, we know that we’ve down in medicine hat which is below the confluence of the bow and the old man, the summer flow, the mean summer flow is now 30% less than it was when we started keeping flow records in the early 19 hundreds. And in Lethbridge along the Old Man River, we’re closer to 40%, 50% less flow during the primary irrigation season than would’ve happened naturally. And I guess that’s another point I want to make is that we record flows, which are the actual flows in the rivers, and from that information we calculate what the natural flow would be if we didn’t have all these dams and diversions. That’s a very important distinction for us to understand too. And like our apportionment agreements with Saskatchewan require, we pass 50% of natural flow,
We have to calculate what the natural flow would be in order to understand if we are meeting our apportionment agreements. I am probably deviating a bit from your question, but with respect to water quality monitoring, I have talked to individuals, and David probably knows this better. In our rivers there are long-term water quality monitoring stations, but they just grab a value maybe once or twice a month.
And some you can by just once or twice a month, you’re going to miss big events or something that’s released into the rivers that shouldn’t be released. I’ve been puzzled that we don’t have of water quality, at least total dissolved, solid monitoring on a continual basis as we do monitor the flows. I mean we could set those up together and the amount of sediment you have in a river tells you a lot about the water quality. There are a lot of gaps, Jenny. It’s very hard for us to get a handle on trends in water quality in the rivers of the South Saskatchewan reasons.
Legalizing Rights of Nature
Jenny (00:33:07):
Yeah, this is a prevalent issue that happens in all areas it seems where we are doing monitoring. I hear the word monitoring and I think monitoring is not mitigating. I keep hearing that in my head. We’re doing this monitoring, we’re doing this measuring, we’ve got gaps in the data and then there’s no objectives that are actually getting us back on track. Like this 10% number. You guys didn’t even actually say what it means. What does it translate to in terms of restoring that and considering we’re seeing a loss in these river volumes over time, it’s not enough. We’re not doing enough to keep the instream flow objectives needs, excuse me, in place. Okay. Judy, with all of that background, can you speak to some of the legal ways that places have added rights of nature into law so that there is an opportunity to make sure that we are actually meeting objectives in this way and some of the ways that the approaches that people are using? Thank you.
Judy:
Okay. This is very complex. As you know, land use is primarily done through land use. Planning and management is done through the municipal governments unless it’s public land or federal land. Municipalities are tasked with managing the land but not having very much of a say on how water is meshed. The water runs through and is part of the landscape in every single municipality in Alberta. And yet very little is actually done by municipalities to make sure that the watershed and the water features water bodies are protected during land use planning. But municipalities can actually do a lot. If you go back to the framework for water management planning that was put out in 2000, there is a strategy for protecting the aquatic environment that was written right into that document. And it’s available saying what kind of data that needs to be collected and updated and kept current and reported upon.
That includes quantity quality, it includes looking at the fish and the health of the fish. It’s the vegetation, all of the structure of the river, how it’s being affected by erosion, sedimentation, all of those things are part of aquatic health management. And yet municipalities are not charged with having to look at any of that. And most municipalities, except for City of Calgary or city of Lethbridge that have a lot of money, can’t afford to have an environmental manager on staff. They have to hire consultants who cost so much money. Often they just rely on reports that come in from the consultants who are part of the development industry. There’s so much data that’s missing for every single parcel of land that’s developed in this province if it’s on private land. There’s all this complicated discussion about how we manage the land, but it doesn’t include maybe more than four sentences about how we manage the impact of land use on our water.
We look at this system and say, what’s missing? What’s missing is the understanding of the connections and how critical it is for people to understand that everything we do on the land impacts the water, everything, everything we do, including walking trails, including how we flatten the landscapes, you’re stripping and grading and compact the land and then allow all this water to flow off these impervious surfaces into our water bodies unimpeded in many cases without any other infrastructure to sustain it. What can we do? That’s your question. But what we can do is we can look at our planning documents, and I have the perfect one here and I’m going to bring it up because it was so critical. I don’t know if you can see it, but it’s Alberta Land Use Framework and it was probably the most important public consultation that was ever done in this province.
And it was done extremely well. And out of the land use framework came our regional land use plans that asked us as citizens and as communities to consider that we should start doing land use from a regional perspective. And they gave us the watersheds as the location for us to focus our ideas. And everything has been working quite well until you look at how municipalities are required to implement aspects of the plant, the regional plans. And quite frankly, they’re not. They’re required, not required. They’re expected to do certain things, but even if they don’t do it, no one cares. There’s no penalty, there’s no accountability, there’s no monitoring or reporting required at the municipal scale. And yet that’s where all of our human activities are affecting the aquatic environment and drastically, I know in my own community, there is a drastic impact on the Bow River. Thank goodness it’s such a short stretch of the river because we have a very negative impact on our aquatic ecosystem here in my town.
And I think what we can do for the positive thing is we can work with our municipal councils and teach them that they have the most important tool available of all. They have the land use bylaw and they have these statutory plans. The land use bylaw gives us an opportunity to create these overlays of policy on how we want the land to be used close to our water bodies, and that includes our wetlands, our streams and creeks. And if those overlay of policy are put in place, just that one little rule, we would see a major change in how our aquatic ecosystem is sustained or can be more resilient over time. I’ve taken up way too much time. I tend to wax eloquent, I’ll be quiet now.
The Untapped Power of Municipalities
Bob (00:39:35):
Judy, Judy, you raised some very important issues that we’re trying to grapple with because in addition to the federal legislation, the Fisheries Act, the Navajo Waters Protection Act, the provincial legislation like the Water Act and the Environmental Enhancement Act, those things are all designed to help protect the river. But you’re making a very good point that land use is one of those key factors that also needs to be considered. Just a real quick question with a quick answer. I think in this case, the Water Act contains some provision for municipalities to manage the rivers within their jurisdiction. Am I reading that right? And does that actually have any significance?
Judy:
I wrote a paper on that exact topic. Section 60 of the Municipal Government Act (MGA) says very, very clearly that municipalities have direction, control and management of all the water bodies, which includes all the wetland streams, creeks, everything, drainage courses within the municipal boundaries. But the big writer here is that the beginning of that section 60 says subject to every other enactment. And an enactment is a federal or a provincial law or regulation. Look at all the federal provincial laws and regulations dealing with water, what’s left for municipalities to have direction, control and management of? Even things like boating, they don’t have regulation, regulatory authority to deal with. I encourage you to get my paper. It’s still relevant. I wrote it, it was published by the Alberta Law Society on that exact section 60 of the MGA and what it means, what I did in that paper, and this is probably too complex, but what I did in that paper was show that yes, municipalities could do something.
They could look at all the tools that they have available to them to protect the water bodies through land use management. I did articulate very clearly in that paper how Section 60 could be translated and married to the planning provisions in part 17 of the MGA. That’s a short answer, but it’s not a simple question, Bob. None of these questions are simple. What we have to do is start looking at ecosystem management, start seeing ourselves on the landscape instead of looking, and I would say this, maybe this will be the last thing I’ll say on this program today, but if we see ourselves as an embodiment of the water that we’re born with water a certain amount, we’re all finitely, married to a finite water system, no more is being made, this is it. If we start seeing ourselves it’s integral, integrated right into the water management system and how absolutely critical it is that every drop counts, then we may start to get on the right path to managing how we use the land and how that impacts our water and how our cumulative population economic growth is having tremendous negative impacts on the very, very system that sustains our ability to survive as a species.
That’s maybe more than you wanted, but this is where we have to land. We have to land as seen ourselves there and connected to all of this.
The Challenges with Irrigation Expansion
Bob (00:43:18):
That’s very helpful. But speaking about land use, Cheryl, one of the major factors in water management, certainly in terms of water supply in the province and the southern part of the province is irrigation. And I gather there are moves afoot to actually expand irrigation even more than it currently is. How are they going to be doing that and what can we expect in terms of its impact on the river?
Cheryl:
Well, that’s a big question and I don’t have all the answers, Bob. I do know that irrigation agriculture has been a major economic generator in southern Alberta ever since the early 19 hundreds. And we have over that a hundred years allocated about 75% of, I guess it’s closer to 70% for the whole basin of water, average water, annual mean water to irrigation. That’s like almost three quarters of the water flowing in our rivers is irrigation. Districts are able to secure that water. Well, no, I’m confusing it a bit, sorry about that. But it’s like 70% of the water is allocated and of that 70%, 75% is allocated to irrigation districts. It’s closer to 90% in the old man river basin. In dry years, the districts are needing to take most of that allocation, which means that very little is left for the river. In wet years, irrigation districts don’t need as much, and so the river gets to flow more fully. The critical times are those dry years in terms of ensuring we have sufficient flow in our rivers to keep them alive.
Now, as I said, irrigation agriculture has the majority of allocation and now they are doing these conservation efficiency and productivity measures to use less water for acre of crop cultivated. And I have argued in several processes, government is helping to fund for those improvements in efficiency. We should be taking some of the water that’s saved and assign it to the river to make sure the river stays alive. Well, I’ve been a voice in the wilderness, so to speak in these planning discussions. And because the way our legal structure is set up for water licences, irrigation districts can use whatever they save to intensify their use. They are intensifying use with their existing allocations. They’re growing more crop land, more crop with less water, but that doesn’t seem to be enough. Now they are proposing to build, there’s nine irrigation dams that are undergoing various levels of review in the province now in the South Saskatchewan River basement.
And four, those are onstream dams like on the Red Deer, the Bow and the Belly River. There’s two proposed on the Bow River and five of them are off stream reservoirs so that the districts can store more of the water so they can use their full allocation. The implications of all of those projects proceeding is in terms of the health of our rivers is really mind boggling to me. And yet we are not taking what we would call a cumulative effects approach to understanding what all of that intensification of use and additional withdrawals will mean for not only river health, but for our economy in the future. Because we’ve got a growing population, we have different industries coming into our region, and if we’re stuck in this ratio of 75% allocation goes to irrigation districts and only 15% to municipalities, maybe 5% to industry, it’s far worse in the old man basin where 90% goes to irrigation districts and only 2% goes to municipal, uses 5% for industry. We get stuck. Our choices for our future are very limited based on how our current government is managing.
Bob:
The upshot of all this is that if there is going to be irrigation efficiency improvements, then basically the extra water that is saved is going to be going to irrigation. You’ve been trying to get them to put some some water in the river or put some more back in the river. You talked about withdrawals. What’s the prospect for the change in return flows because there are return flows coming back into the river from these irrigation districts. How will this irrigation expansion potentially affect return flows?
Cheryl:
Well, of course it’ll reduce them. And as far as I can understand, there’s no, most licences don’t have a designated return flow. And besides we don’t measure return flow very well at all. There’s no monitoring if a licence does have a return flow condition, whether it’s actually being met. I think the prevailing view is that the more water you can use from your licence to grow crop, the better it is for Albertans generally without any thought of the river, what it’s doing to the river. But yes, it’s going to harm our rivers. It’s a good question, Bob, if we are intensifying use of the current allocations, and I guess one point I want to make is that irrigation uses 80% of what it’s allocated, of what it withdraws because that’s taken up by crop or evaporated from soil and reservoirs or canals. They only return on average 20% of what they take out of the river municipalities return 80% of what we take out because it passes through us and through our wastewater system and goes back to the river. There’s much higher level of use with irrigation agriculture and which we need to be mindful of that when we’re trying to figure out what uses we can accommodate in the future.
Bob:
And David, this gets back to the whole thing that I think Cheryl raised, if I recall correctly, and my memory sometimes doesn’t last very long in terms of if you keep taking the water out of the river, if dilution is the solution to pollution, how are you going to be able to manage the water quality, particularly because you are getting contaminants coming in from irrigation districts, but you’re also getting contaminants coming from storm water, from municipalities in particular, from wastewater treatment plants. How are we going to manage that kind of thing in the future?
David:
And just before I answer that too, I just want to add one layer on what Cheryl was saying that the other aspect here is that irrigation districts are often senior licence holders, right? If we’re talking about the allocation is under ideal flows or whatever, but without going into the first in time, first in right discussion because done that, and I think there’s plenty of other discussions that have been had on that. The irrigation districts are quite senior in that as well. And I would also draw attention to the letter, the direction letter for the associate minister of water, which was put out in the fall here. And it is very specifically focused on dam structures, increased irrigation, increased economic return with an area mentioned of environment or flow needs being considered in there. I just wanted to add that on. Cheryl, you eloquently put everything there.
I just wanted to add that extra piece of context there. And then Bob, with regards to your question, this is a challenge, right? And Judy, you were mentioning that the larger municipalities having the capacity, whether it’s funds, whether it’s staff to do appropriate monitoring, similarly, the larger municipalities are the ones that are going to have the capacity for wastewater treatment essentially, right? And high quality wastewater treatment. In the City of Calgary here, we have very high, we have tertiary, it’s very well-treated water. That’s not to say that there’s not contaminants being released with it, nutrients and pharmaceuticals and everything else. And Bob, to your point, if that water is getting withdrawn, we have less to dilute it, right? Those considerations are not aligned. As Judy was saying, there’s municipal responsibilities for certain pieces but not others. And the effluent, the output from those wastewater plants is measured at the end of pipe, right?
It’s measured right before it goes into the Bow River without, broadly I’ll say the regulatory requirement does not consider necessarily the flow. It’s based on average flows, it’s based on other calculations, it’s end of pipe. You’re right, if we’re, no matter how well we’re treating the water, if we’re just adding more wastewater that we need to release and we are drawing down flows, there’s definitely going to be negative water quality impacts associated with that regardless of how you treat it. And that’s even just considering a city or municipality that has the ability and the capacity finances to do a really high quality treatment, not just the bare minimum. If you start looking at other municipalities and regional districts that might have, or counties that have less capacity to do it again, that effect could be amplified. Unfortunately, there’s a disconnect between those different regulations and requirements. Again, I think echoing what Judy and Cheryl have already said.
Key Takeaways and Comments on Changes to the Water Act
Jenny (00:56:25):
Wonderful. Wow. You guys have shared so much with us today. I think what I’m going to do is offer some of my takeaways from this conversation and perhaps we can in each of our opportunities to do the same, think about the changes, the amendments to the water act that are being proposed right now and offer your thoughts about what we should be doing instead. I’m just going to mention, like I said, I heard multi-stakeholder engagement having not more essential focus on indigenous science. That is quite simply ecological science. Let’s be clear. Both Judy said that, you said that David Cheryl said that having more of that focus of ecological stability being the central focus of each of these conversations, I love this thought about the municipalities being this major gap. This is clearly the problem. I’m going to use gravel as for instance, they are approved in principle by the municipalities and then approved by the government without any of that review of the cumulative impacts and those things that would otherwise prevent those projects from proceeding. I think closing that gap is massive. I am curious, David, can you just remind us who the associate minister of water is? Just quickly please.
David:
Yeah, that’s Grant Hunter, I believe, isn’t it? Yes.
Jenny:
Okay. Okay. Yeah. That’s fascinating that there is, as you were saying, more authority being granted, discretion being granted to the directors across the province. And as we heard from our conversation with Davin Macintosh, there is already a very big difference between various directors as to how they allocate licences and how they approve them and transfers, et cetera. Yeah, those are some of the main things I wanted to hit home. And then also just that we could have quality testing along with flow flow testing so that we have this marriage and this understanding of what’s happening together rather than the separation of each of these aspects, I’ll say. Those are my takeaways. David, you’re at the top of my screen, I’m going to flip you back in and let you offer some closing thoughts. First please. And then we’ll move down the row. Thank you.
David:
Yeah, absolutely. And Judy, I really liked what you were saying about seeing ourselves as part of the ecosystem. I think that’s critical. How we need to continue this conversation is with that as a central tenant, not us in the middle, but us as part of that ecosystem and impacting it. I’ll say one thing on the monitoring, Jenny, just because you just mentioned it, we have the ability to do, Cheryl, you stood on my soapbox for me about point sampling, which is fantastic because you capture one point in time if you take a grab sample, if you dip your water bottle in and take your sample at that point, you’re not seeing what happened 10 minutes ago a week ago. We can use, there’s continuous monitoring, but there’s also biological monitoring that we can use to see, right? If the biology is responding in a certain way that’s telling us, or if there’s certain body loading, if there’s contaminants accumulating in, piling up in the bugs in the fish that can tell us how things are being exposed or what they’ve been exposed to over a longer period of time, they integrate over time.
That’s, again, this comes back to that cumulative effects that was also mentioned. And I guess my other soapbox is how we grow, and this was already mentioned, but how we grow in Southern Alberta is going to be critical to our water availability, security, quantity, quality, all of that we’ve seen historically because we’re not constrained by space. We’ve seen sprawl, we’ve seen encroachment into those riparian areas. Even just recently, the city of Calgary approved development right along close to the River bank, into a ecologically sensitive area that had heron rooks and all sorts of stuff. How we grow is a huge part of that. That’s again, one of the reasons I read in the municipal election was because that is often not, look how we grow impacts both the water, the return, the impact on the environment, on the river, but also our own consumption, right?
As we add more and more distribution network, we’ve got more loss just because we’ve got pipes, right, that we’re piping it around on Bill seven, the Water Act amendments, I think it is quite concerning some of the wording changes, and again, Judy’s much more of an expert on the legal side than I am, but the folks that I’ve been talking to, there’s wording changes in there that a give a lot of discretion to directors without, it removes the discussion. Interbasin transfers for an example, used to have to go to the legislature to be discussed. Now it’s being removed into the ministerial office to be discussed, and there’s no requirement at that point in this water act for certain assessments or scientific rigour to be applied to those decisions. That’s a little bit concerning. I am interested, I was a little bit hopeful, I guess that there would’ve been more on the water reuse side so that we could more effectively use the water that we’ve already used, right? Whether that’s from water funds, whether that’s wastewater treated, wastewater use, that kind of thing. But unfortunately, there wasn’t. There’s a whole other kettle of fish that needs to be addressed with the Water Act amendments that I would encourage anybody involved in water to be looking at this and seeing, because this is going to chart the path for water management in the province for the foreseeable future. We have an opportunity right now.
Jenny:
Yeah, agreed. It’s definitely something to look at. Before I flip it to you, Judy, I did want to add too, there are a lot of places in the world that are removing dams, to hear that Alberta is looking to add dams to this, this is one of the things that’s really concerning to me. We’re still talking about managing rather than thinking about restoring and actually increasing water capacity. With that, Judy, may I ask you the same question? Some thoughts about the Water Act amendments and your concerns, and I know you’ve done a tremendous job in providing a bunch of people some recommendations as alternative language. In two minutes, just kidding, give us your lowdown of what the key things are that people need to look for and advocate against or for Oh, I’m sorry, I muted you. The dogs were barking. Sorry about that. Go ahead.
Judy:
My puppies might cooperate, so maybe we can keep my mic on. Anyway, the changes to the water act are very, very stressful to me, and I have nightmares because all of this water that we’re saying is now a new source or an alternate source of water is basically taking it out of the system. It’s not new water, it’s the same water. And if we don’t appreciate that the rain and the storm drainage and the return flows are already part of a water management system, they’re not new or alternate sources, then we’re in big trouble. The aquatic environment already is struggling even though the return flows are going back and we’re not taking the storm drainage and using it for something else. And we are minimizing how we use our rainwater. What’s going to happen to the aquatic environment if all of a sudden these water supplies our commercialized, let’s say that they’re commercialized to allow for further growth in communities and further economic growth, what’s going to happen to our aquatic ecosystem?
And that’s the big question that we’ve asked government from so many different people and we don’t get any answers. The last thing I want to say on amendments to the Water Act, we haven’t heard about it publicly, but I’ve been hearing about privately and professionally, is this new trend to allow farmers to destroy seasonal wetlands without having to adhere to the Alberta wetland policy. This is just coming out that there’s been an interim directive telling directors that they don’t have to use the Alberta wetland policy so far, it’s just among some of the experts legal community that we’re struggling with this because if we allow this and we don’t ensure that the Alberta wetland policy is adhere to by everyone, we’re creating a double system. And we’re not respecting the fact that these wetlands are absolutely critical to sustaining the ecosystem and the aquatic environment that we’re used to having at our disposal for all of our different needs, whether it’s industry or just to live, whether it’s crop production, whatever it is, the wetlands are critical.
We understand that in this province, and so much has been written about it, but yet with the stroke of a pen, perhaps that’s all going to change. We have to be very mindful, and I appreciate the opportunity to say this today, and I appreciate all of you for being as concerned as I am about the CU of effects of the regulatory change and how our lives are going to change as a result. Not just the water and not just the animals, and not just the riparian habitat, but also our lives, the very what makes us able to survive in this southern Alberta where water is scarce. That’s all going to change. I’m glad that we’re having these discussions, but I’d like us to just for one second, stop and think about the aquatic environment where you are right now, wherever you live and how you’re connected to it. And if each of us did that every day, paid homage to that, I think we would treat it a little bit better and help to protect it a little bit better as well.
Jenny:
Wonderful. Judy, thank you so much, Cheryl. Your turn please. Some closing thoughts.
Cheryl:
Well, when I came to Alberta in 1971, we viewed water as abundance. And in one generation we’ve gone from abundant water perceptions to shortage. And that’s alarming to me how quickly we have come to that. And I think like Judy and David, the health of our water in our wetlands or our rivers or groundwater reflects how well we’re living on the land. And I think right now we’re getting a failing grade based on the bits of information we, we don’t have the full picture because we don’t do enough monitoring and collection of data. And what keeps me awake at night is thinking about, as I mentioned before, our shrinking rivers and how early in my career I participated in water management planning with a great deal of optimism and belief that the system, we could all work together and make improvements. And over the last several years, I’ve become quite disheartened that we appear to have seeded water management planning to irrigation industry, which holds the lion’s share of the water allocation. And instead of proceeding with intents that we had put forward in the South Saskatchewan River basin and water management plan, including trying to achieve water conservation objective, we’ve given up on it and the changes to the water act affirm that for me, that were making it easier to intensify use. There’s nothing in there for the rivers. I just think as a population, southern Albertans need to be very mindful of the current direction our water allocation system is taking and who’s in charge. And I think I’ll just leave it at that.
Jenny:
Yeah, this came up in our conversation yesterday with David and Jason, is that the less engagement with the public is happening and more decision making is happening in the hands of the senior licence holders, as David alluded to earlier. And more and more where we should be now is the time to be spending time adding back into the system. And we’re still drawing, if not more, well, not if more than we should be. Okay. Letting Bob wrap up the final world for us, please.
Bob:
Okay. Well, first of all, thank you very much for giving us your valuable time. We really appreciate that. And I think Jenny has done a great job summarizing the issues that came out of that. And then I think you three have then expanded it considerably beyond what we actually talked about today. Certainly in terms of the community working together and not excluding certain points of view, the role of the government. And those are the kinds of things we’re actually going to be dealing with in our next podcast. Next week, I think, is it Friday.
Bob:
We’re going to be talking about the future of water? You’ve given us even more stuff to try to include in that hour and make some sense of it. The thing that has struck me the most from our conversation is the data gaps, or let’s just call them gaps because they aren’t just scientific gaps, they are legal gaps. They are decision-making gaps. And we hope that through these podcasts and the information we’ve gained, we may be able to provide some good advice thanks to your help in terms of how to close at least some of those gaps, whether they’re scientific, political, legal, whatever. Thank you very much and thank you to Jenny and I don’t do this enough because she’s the prime organizer behind this. I think up lots of questions, but we wouldn’t ever get to those questions unless Jenny had organized us. She’s a good mother to us.
Jenny:
Thank you. Thank you, Bob, so appreciative of you. These conversations wouldn’t have happened without him. Thank you so much, everyone, for being here, and yeah, it’s been a real honour. Thank you so much, ladies and David, thank you so much for coming back, especially last minute to join us here. Big pleasure. Okay. Yes, our next conversation is happening on Friday next week with Kennedy and Bruce, who’s also been a guest on this show. And we’re also looking to hopefully sit down with Bob Sanford at some point too. Really excited to have that conversation as well. Thank you very much, everyone. Have a great rest of your day. Take care for now.
Cheryl:
Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye.
