Season 2, Episode 10: The Impacts of Resource Extraction
with Dr. Younis Alila, David Mayhood, and Jason Unger
Season 2, Episode 10 is the second conversation of a podcast mini-series on Water in Southern Alberta focused on The Impacts of Resource Extraction. Co-host Bob Morrison and I are joined by experts Dave Mayhood, an aquatic ecologist; Dr. Younes Alila, a professor specializing in forest hydrology; and Jason Unger, executive director at the Environmental Law Centre. Key topics include the ecological effects of gravel extraction, the hydrological impacts of clear-cut logging, the pollutive and destructive uses of freshwater in oil and gas development, and the legal frameworks surrounding water management. The conversation highlights the need for regulatory innovation, cumulative effects analysis, and the importance of federal intervention in environmental protection. The podcast encourages listeners to find common ground and engage in meaningful discussions about the future of water and resource management.
Introductions to David Mayhood, Jason Unger, and Dr. Younes Alila
Jenny:
Welcome to The Gravity Well Podcast. I am Jenny Yeremiy. I host the Gravity well to celebrate and share the stories of people looking to empower others with knowledge and skills required to reestablish stability in our communities and ecosystems. Our 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 were created to honour the laws of the land, maintain balance with nature by giving back and 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. 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. Welcome everyone. I’m very glad to have a number of people with us today, which I’ll get into in a minute. For anybody following along with the gravity, well, we’re still in the first half of season two if you’re a subscriber. This is episode 10 in season two, but for today’s purposes, this is episode two in a mini podcast series that I’m hosting with Bob Morrison. This one is on the impacts of resource extraction on water in Southern Alberta, and we have three guests with us here today. First, Dave Mayhood. He holds a master’s of limnology. He’s an aquatic ecologist. Bob Morrison and I have been collaborating with a woman by the name of Susan Ellis who’s been telling us you need to have a limnologist in this conversation.
Welcome Dave, and now I see why we would potentially need you in several conversations. I hope you have a good experience today and are ready to do that again. And to that end, we also are welcomed by Dr. Younes Alila. Younes is a professor in the Department of Forest Resource Management at UBC, that’s the University of British Columbia, and he’s here to speak on the impacts of clear-cut logging and other resource extraction activities. I should say the same for Dave. Dave’s going to focus on gravel for us and some other water transfer type situations in Alberta, and then we’re also joined by Jason Unger. Jason is an executive director at the Environmental Law Centre here in Alberta. He’ll speak to law and policy around these various issues and not necessarily on the impact side, but we’ll contribute where he can there.
Welcome everyone. Like I said, we hope to have you participate in more of these. Why are we talking about Water in Southern Alberta? Just to back up a bit, this series of podcasts is for the general public. First and foremost, we want people involved in water to also feel empowered to discuss the future of water, as well as, concerned citizens. I am certainly a concerned citizen. I am a geophysicist by background, I worked in the fossil fuel industry for 22 years. My first half was almost strictly on the development side, and then I got exposed to liabilities in 2013, and you can’t go back. Once you take the toothpaste out of the tube, you don’t stop seeing it. That’s where I came into this, became really concerned about water and I’m really glad that Bob has helped prepare an outline for me to host some conversations focused on it.
We had our first conversation a couple weeks ago with Shannon Stunden Bower and Jordan Christianson. We spoke about The History of Irrigation in Alberta and how that leads to where we are today. It was an excellent conversation and it’ll air on Friday, May 30th. This conversation is the first of the environmental conversation, again, impacts on water. I’m really excited about that. Then we’re going to have some conversations around stewardship, reducing our impact on the water and what that looks like. And then finally, the future which we think will now be in September, the way this is unfolding, we’re hoping to do most of these first half of the conversations in June here and then take a break over the summer and regroup and hit the future with hopefully some of you again. Okay, I’m going to stop there. Thank you for letting me introduce the problem and the situation. And Bob, if you wouldn’t mind just reintroducing yourself for the audience and we’ll go from there.
Bob:
My name’s Bob Morrison. I’m a retired planner. Most of my career was spent in water management and transportation planning, and since retirement, I’ve been involved primarily in municipal issues here in Calgary. I’m very concerned about water in southern Alberta because that’s where I live and because it can have some very significant impacts, not only on the economy, on the rivers, but also on society itself. The key issue that I see is we need to educate people, including me because my ignorance knows no bounds, and we need to make sure that people understand all these various disciplines that are involved in water use, water management and water protection. Thanks Jenny.
Jenny:
Thank you Bob. Lots of prep has gone into what we’re doing here, I’m really grateful to you for all of this. Dave Mayhood, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how we roped you into a conversation about the impacts of resource extraction in southern Alberta. Thanks.
David:
Yeah, my name’s Dave Mayhood. As Jenny said, I’m a limnologist, which broadly interpreted means the ecology of inland waters, and lately I’ve been concentrating most of my interest is in streams and rivers on the Eastern Slopes of Alberta. And Jenny strong-armed me into discussing what I know about gravel extraction and its effects on the ecology of these streams and rivers.
Jenny:
Thank you very much for introducing yourself, Dave, please, Younes, you’re next.
Younes:
Jenny and Bob thx for having me in this podcast. My name again is Younes Alila, and I am a professor in the faculty of Forestry Department of Forest Resource Management at UBC in the Vancouver campus. I joined the faculty of forestry in 1996 with a civil engineering background. I broke the history record of forest hydrology and academia of forest hydrology by being the first civil engineer to be slotted in a forest hydrologist position in the faculty of forestry. I took my three degrees in the civil engineering department at the University of Ottawa, 1981 to 1994 with a master’s and PhD, specializing in the study of extremes in the form of storms, floods, droughts, and landslides. And since I joined the faculty of forestry in 1996. For the last 30 years or so, I have been focusing my research, mostly trying to quantify and understand the effect of the clearcut logging, which is about the only practice we have been logging the trees with.
And as long as we have been logging not just in BC but also in Alberta, and I assume elsewhere in Canada, I’ve been understanding and quantifying the effect of clear-cut logging on hydrology in general and on floods, droughts and landslides in particular. I am here today to share with you some of the stuff that I have learned over the last 30 years, but in a nutshell, the outcome of 30 years of peer reviewed literature that I have done with my graduate students and postdocs has revealed that the hydrology is extremely super sensitive to the clear-cut logging that we continue to do in Canada.
Jenny:
Glad to have you here and really looking forward to hearing more about this from you. Jason, your next please.
Jason:
Yes, thanks for having me. Jason Unger, executive director and a lawyer with the Environmental Law Centre. The Environmental Law Centre is an organization that really focuses on providing legal information and focusing on law reform specifically to promote basically laws and policies that are for people and the planet. My work at the Environmental Law Centre as executive director, but prior as a lawyer, has really been focused on a lot of the water issues that Alberta faces and there’s no shortage of them frankly. Everything from currently the Water Act, proposals for changes to the water act, as well as issues around water allocation, over allocation of water and impacts on fisheries, and that includes Species at Risk and other species as well. And really focusing on how do we get laws and policies that are effective at managing those impacts and protection of the environment moving forward. Thanks.
Jenny:
Wonderful. Yes. With those, I understand that you’re going to be doing some conversations for the public to help them understand how to provide feedback on these changes too. Is that true, Jason?
Jason:
That’s correct. Coming up later in June, yeah, we’re going to be reaching out to Albertans to help them understand the potential changes to the Water Act and what it means for water in an over-allocated basin where you’re intensifying the use of water and the implications for the aquatics system.
The Impacts of Oil and Gas on Freshwater and Land Use
Jenny:
Yes, and we’re happy to help amplify that call to action as well, Jason. Thank you again for joining us. Bob gave us all some various questions from our backgrounds. I’m going to walk through some of the questions and answers that I have prepared from my perspective. Again, just to remind everyone, I’m speaking on freshwater use in the fossil fuel industry, it’s my understanding that we use about 220 billion litres a year of freshwater. One of the questions Bob asked was, what water do we use? Well, to me, the only water I know that’s measured is freshwater. I don’t know of any public record of produced water, for example, that is available to people. I mean you could do it if you went through and tried to grab it off of the public databases, but that would take a lot of work to be able to do this.
When I’m speaking about the numbers here, I’m speaking about freshwater use. This is what is recorded in terms of freshwater use. That equates to about 1.3 billion barrels a year that the oil industry is using, and it’s actually equivalent to the amount of oil that we export consequently. That means for every barrel of oil that we are exporting, we are polluting an equivalent amount in water. When you hear the industry talk about the fact that they’ve reduced water usage per barrel, that’s still where we’re at, a one-to-one ratio. It was worse apparently in the past. Where does that water get used? Well, it’s mostly used in the oil sands. About 82% of that water is dedicated to the oil sands. What is it used for? Primarily in the oil sand that’s used for steam injection or to separate the bitumen from the rock.
We have in Alberta very immature oil, it’s quite sticky to the pores of rock. In order to free that up, we need, well, there are a couple ways we can do it, but water is unfortunately one of the most inexpensive ways to produce bitumen. That fresh water is acquired through what’s called a water diversion licence. The industry must request a water diversion licence, and that’s how they attain their water. For example, this is all publicly available. There’s on the AER website, under public notice of application, you can look up the last 30 days of water diversion licences. For example, over the last 30 days, there were 55 companies that applied for water diversion licences in the province, and the five top drawers were Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Baytex Energy, Vermillion, Ovintiv, and Tourmaline. And like I said, there were 55 companies in total.
The other water part that we haven’t spoken about yet is disposal. With our production, we get produced water. That is not fresh water generally speaking, that is saline water, but that water has to be dealt with. When we use water in the industry, there’s a couple ways that it’s dealt with. We have what has accumulated from the oil sands in tailings ponds. That’s an estimated 1.7 trillion liters of water that are sitting in those pools. Again, that’s an equivalent to 11 billion barrels of wastewater that’s sitting in those tailings ponds. But often the freshwater that’s used in the industry is gone forever, which is when I say forever, I mean on a human timescale, let’s say, because that water goes into the formation. For example, if we’re fracking with freshwater, that water goes into the formation to be gone forever, and even if it does come back as produced water, it’s then disposed of because it’s now considered contaminated.
The option for that is to be injected, that water gets injected into formations that will receive it. Often there are some fresh water formations at depth that can take that water or it’s back into the reservoir itself, which we have done what’s called water flooding, which is one way that that produced water can potentially add more production to fossil fuel development. Does it leak? Does that water come back to the surface as one of the questions that Bob was asking? And yes, unfortunately there have been instances where we see water come to the surface. A really good example of this was spoken about on our podcast with Sarah Stogner, who’s down in Texas. They are injecting into a formation that outcrops in Texas. And on her land, she experienced salt water flooding on her land from an over pressurized reservoir that brought water to the surface.
Of course if water comes to the surface, that also means that there are gases and other fluids that come to the surface. That’s where human health impacts, and I’ll stop after this, comes into play. I was just in a press conference, Dr. Norman Campbell, who was representing the Canadian Association of Physicians, the environment spoke about benzene being a toxin that really is known to cause cancer, heart attacks, strokes, loss of birth rates, lower birth rates, excuse me, and other birth defects from people who live close to fossil fuel development, either producing or inactive development. I’ll just close with that. It’s estimated that half of the wells in Alberta are leaking in some fashion with those gases. It’s a very high likelihood that there is an environmental impact in many of the communities in Alberta with us having such a broad impact.
I’ll just say that there’s 275,000 sites that need to be addressed and cleaned up on the conventional side, and then on the oil sand side there’s a hundred thousand hectares, that’s the equivalent of a hundred thousand football fields that have a footprint on the environment and need to help. To me, the key is restoration. That’s my key message is that that is to me the primary way that we’re going to address many of these water related issues from resource extraction is to prioritize restoration. And I’ll stop there. Thank you. Dave, are you okay to walk through some of your thoughts on gravel extraction and any other things you want to talk about with respect to resource extraction?
David:
I’m happy to do that. I’m just interested. Just before I start, I was impressed by your statement that water for oil extraction is the cheapest way to extract oil, and therefore you’re suggesting without suggesting it, that there’s a very good method of controlling the impact on the freshwater system by simply raising the price of the oil of the water that’s used for extraction, and that could be based on the damage that the now salinized and contaminated water, the cost of that kind of damage. I’m curious, is there any movement towards doing that because the damage of water extraction is likely to be very high?
Jenny:
That’s an excellent question. I mean, to me, this is where the mine financial security program should be coming into play here in terms of on the oil sand side, especially because of the amount of water and where it sits in terms of its ability to contaminate freshwater resources around it. To me, there absolutely should be a quantification of that amount and direction or requests from the Alberta Energy Regulator and Alberta Environment as to what the status is of addressing that. I think that there’s a lever there to pull, Dave, Absolutely. The other thing I wanted to mention because actually it was in one of the questions you caught, is the alternatives. For example, fracking freshwater is known to actually cause what’s called a skin on the reservoir, it actually impedes production long term. You hear of all of these peak production and long tail off with fracking, if produced water was used, that skin is lower, is much lower, and it actually has an opportunity to produce better production longer term.
But it doesn’t necessarily because you don’t have access to as much produced water potentially you can’t do as big of fracks. But yes, I think there’s absolutely something to what you’re saying there, which is to quantify the freshwater cost better. And the only thing I’ll add is I’m a firm believer that there is no new production that is not harming the environment further. I would much rather that we aren’t doing any more fossil fuel development and rather just looking at preserving down what we have and ensuring that we’re not needing new fresh water for new development. That would be my first and foremost plug the boat before we start bailing the water out, if you will.
Bob:
Jenny, I think Jason may have an answer on pricing.
Jason:
Yeah, certainly. I think that’s one of the things that we had suggested that the provincial government look into more is industrial licensing pricing or rents on the water resource itself. I think that’s particularly the case where you’re seeing potable water or non-saline water being converted into consumed for all intents and purposes, but in this latest round it seems that they are not going to look at that at this stage, but certainly Alberta or BC when they reviewed their water legislation, they did put in water rent and often those resources generated by that revenue is you can put that back into the restoration system. That’s certainly something that should be looked at. It’s a public resource, a valuable, essential foundational public resource that we should be taking every measure to conserve to the greatest degree possible. Sure.
Bob:
And Jason, at the current time, basically somebody pays to get a licence to go through the application process. Are there any other charges now in the system?
Jason:
Usually the costs are related mostly to the infrastructure and pumping that you would have to do as the licence holder, but there’s no actual resource fee or anything like that. There is an application fee in that process and any data collection or information you might need to do that process, but after you have that licence, there’s not really any additional government based fees that flow to the government for that resource use.
Bob:
So unlike oil and gas, we don’t have a royalty on water or anything like that.
Jason:
Correct, yeah, and I think admittedly it gets contentious because obviously the humans need water to survive and the issue of how you price water, there’s issues around equity and a variety of other things, certainly we’ve said, well, looking at licensed industrial uses is different from the human right to water in that context.
Jenny:
Right, start that.
The Impacts of Gravel Mining on Freshwater and Land Use
Bob:
Dave, now tell us about gravel and streams.
David:
I don’t know. I will talk about that. I’m interested that you brought that up as a major issue. I believe it is. It’s one that’s very largely ignored, particularly by government regulators and I want to just because I’m a limnologist, I want to talk about the ecology and how it’s affected the streams, both the open channels, the riparian areas and the hyper areas. Essentially the groundwater underneath the streams, open channels, that is directly and intimately collected with the open water. And it turns out that when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. The open water in the open channel is actually quite unproductive even in relatively productive streams because many of the phenomena that we’re interested in: materials processing, chemical processing, all of that occurs or tends to occur on surfaces and where are the most extensive surfaces? Well, they’re in the gravel and the sediment that underlay these alluvial streams and rivers that forms the floodplain on either side in these larger channels.
And it turns out that when you think about it, the processing capacity of these areas is absolutely enormous because of the enormous surface area that these phenomena take place on. It’s really important. You might think of, I’ll give you an example. I used to when I was a kid, raise tropical fish and we used a sub gravel filter to keep the water clean and the way it keeps the water clean is water is drawn from the open water where the fish live down into the gravel where bacteria and algae and fungi process the waste products and turn them into essentially fertilizer for the plants that are growing and are rooted in the gravel and you can think of these gravel bed rivers and streams as these sub gravel filters, it’s enormously important to maintain their function. Unfortunately, some of the best deposits of course are in living rivers and streams in their riparian areas and the gravel beds that are associated with them, they’re the natural target of industry.
They’re right open, they’re on the surface. You just go down to the riverbank and dig ’em up and haul ’em away. But you can imagine that the potential impact of that is really, really large. I want to say the gravel is there for a reason, but the way the ecology of the streams works is very reliant on having this extensive gravel area with the water flowing into and out of the open channel and all of this chemical processing going on in these gravel beds. Unfortunately in Alberta we’re starting, as I understand it, at least the gravel miners like to tell us that they really have no other choices. They’ve mapped all the gravel deposits and they want ’em all, and that just sets us up for a major confrontation at some point about whether we’re going to have living rivers or whether we’re going to have dead buildings made of concrete.
Somehow we have to resolve this problem because several of the public hearings I’ve been in or applications that I’ve dealt with, the regulators are basically ignoring the ecological impact of these mining operations, which can be very substantial. Obviously they will mobilize silt, but they also mobilize heavy metals and many of which are toxic and get into the food chain and are passed along and become toxic to the things that we’re trying to keep alive. That’s just the general overview of gravel mining I should say. It’s just extremely annoying and frankly astonishing to me to see how so-called regulators in Alberta basically ignore these environmental effects of gravel mining, which are bound to be very substantial.
Bob:
Dave, are there alternatives to using gravel particularly in using or creating concrete?
David:
I don’t know. Younes may have a better idea of that. It’s more an engineering question than I’m capable of answering.
Bob:
The reason I ask is I know that there is some talk about breaking up concrete from existing buildings when they knock them down and using that as a gravel substitute, but I’m not an expert in that obviously.
David:
Sure. I know in the case of sand, which is also important in making concrete, they can’t just use stuff like beach sand apparently because it’s too smooth. They need stuff that interlocks. That’s my understanding. So the apparent supply of the finer sediments is actually smaller than what you may think. What they’re looking for is high quality angular sand, and as far as gravel goes, there are huge deposits outside of rivers. Those just tend to be the places where they’re most accessible. But in upland areas, there are basically abandoned channels from past glacial activity that are available for exploitation, but they tend to become aquifers as well. Transporting water that is exploited by wells,
Jenny:
Right? Yeah. This marriage between gravel and oil and gas was news to me. I went to a hearing as you were saying with the a ER in sundry and the residents were talking about the drawdown on their wells, on their lands, seeing 10 feet or more dropping of the water levels, and their question was, we’re watching these frack tracks come pull up and take water from this gravel operation. When are you stopping this based on what they’re witnessing on the landscape and the response from the representative from the a ER was we’ve asked them to pull slower, which my jaw hit the floor to your point about we’re not supposed to be in the water table if I understand right from others, that we’re supposed to stay a meter above the water table and that’s not the case if that’s what’s happening there. Lots of evidence and not really regulator at play there. Anyway, we could go on and on about that, but thank you for introducing that challenge for us, Dave. Okay. Younes, can you please enlighten us from a clear-cut perspective on the ways that we are not honouring the ecology as well, please?
The Impacts of Clearcut Logging on Freshwater and Land Use
Younes:
Yes, Jenny extremes in the form of landslides and floods and droughts and wildfires are quick to be blamed on climate change, particularly by government agencies of all levels and by the industry and by the wider public and the media as well. But the reality is our actions on the land, in the form of land use, land management, and forestry practices on the landscape exacerbate the severity and the frequency of these extremes and the form of again, droughts and floods and landslides and even wildfire. And therefore, if we zoom in on the effect of land use and land cover changes, associated policies and regulations on floods and droughts and on the chief of all the land cover changes which is clear-cut logging, the research over the last 20 to 30 years have shown that the clear-cut logging and excessively clear-cut logging in watersheds of all sizes across all provinces in Canada, and BC and Alberta are on top of the list of provinces where these practices continue to be used, are increasing the severity, the frequency, and the duration of both the floods and the droughts.
For the wider public listening to this podcast, clear-cutting means shaving the lands in the forest, which is again the cheapest way for the forest industry to increase their profit, the cheapest way of logging is clear-cutting to increase their profit and in the process of making use of the large enough trees that will have fibre value, then the process when they clear-cut, they also take on the small and the medium size of trees that have no value whatsoever in terms of money, but they’re shaving it and we’re losing it and therefore when we clear-cut, we’re not only losing the larger trees that have good value, but we’re losing the understory that have small and medium size trees that have no values whatsoever to the forest industry that goes as waste and slash, but in the process of practicing clear-cut logging, we end up losing 30, 40 years of regrowth.
I understand that we are mandated by the government to actually replant trees in the clearcuts after logging, but the coniferous trees that we are replanting are very slow on regrowth such as the nature of the dry snow environment and the interior and therefore the science have shown that it takes over 80 years for the regenerated regrown forest and the cut block to regain its hydrologic functionality and the more you go up north in Canada and Alberta and BC, et cetera, the longer it takes for the hydrology to recover after clear-cut logging if we were actually logging the trees via other means such as selective tree logging and small patch cut logging and strip cut logging. There are a wide range of alternatives, more eco-friendly logging practices that we teach the students at the universities, but the only way we have been logging since we started logging over the last century is, and we continue to do so is through this malpractice of clear-cutting. The problem again with an increase in the magnitude and frequency and duration of floods of all sizes.
Clear-cut logging increases the magnitude, frequency and duration of the small, the medium, the large, the very large and even the apocalyptic floods. And the larger the flood events, the bigger is the effect of clear-cut logging and our hydro climate environment. Being mountainous and snow dominated is super sensitive to that shaving of the landscape from its first cover in the process clear-cutting ends up causing us to lose [water]. In my opinion, based on 30 years of research work, we have lost one of our most natural protections against an increase in flood risk caused by climate change. Therefore, instead of preserving the forest cover to mitigate an increase in flood risk caused by climate change, we are exacerbating and making the situation worse and therefore our actions on the land in the form of policy and regulation is portraying a lack of appreciation of the power of forest and mitigating hydrology and geomorphology.
Unfortunately, another aspect is when you increase the magnitude, frequency and duration of the high flows, you destabilize the channel network. Obviously, that has major implications on the amount of sediments that are being transported from the headwaters into the more downstream areas that are often more populated and therefore we have now a double whammy in the lowland populated areas that are draining the headwaters and the channels from the headwaters. The increase in the flood risk in the lowland, these urban areas, is a result of not only an increase in the quantity of flows caused by clear-cutting, but also an increase of the amount of sediments transported downstream, which would then have to settle down at the bottom of these larger rivers that crosses the urban areas. That extra process of siltation, which is the settling of the fine sediments at the bottom of the large rivers in the lowland end up choking the carrying capacity of these rivers increasing the chances of it inundating its floodplain, and this is one of the two ways the flood, the risk increases in the downstream direction through an increase in the amount of flows by clear-cutting the forest, but also an increase of the amount of fine sediments that settle at the bottom and therefore most often what engineers are doing in the lowland and the ways of managing the flood risk in the urban areas, they actually rely heavily on engineering solutions such as increasing the size of the bridge, increasing the size of the culverts and raising the dikes.
But these are actually engineering solutions treating the symptoms as opposed to the root cause of the problem because the root cause of the problem is what we are doing to the landscape, particularly in the headwaters in the form of changes of the forest cover. When you increase the magnitude, frequency, and duration of the flows of all sizes, the high flows, you are affecting aquatic life in the channel system. You are affecting downstream communities, you are affecting water quality, which is used for water supply and domestic water supply, industrial water supply, et cetera. The consequences are dire. The cost to society, the cost to the government, the cost to taxpayers, the cost of these extremes in the form of floods is huge.
In the last several years alone, for instance in British Columbia, there have been several class action lawsuits triggered by plaintiffs that have been affected by the downstream flooding and defendants of those class action lawsuits are the government of BC as well as a long list of all the logging companies operating simultaneously in large river basins. Typically what is happening in BC, and I assume the same would be happening in Alberta, in any large river basin, there will be multiple logging companies operating simultaneously in different parts of the watersheds and logging simultaneously with very little co coordination, very little remorse or accounting for the so-called cumulative effects because if there are several companies logging in the headwaters in different parts of the larger river basin, eventually all the cumulative effects downstream and often lip services being paid to coordination between the different logging companies and lip services being paid to the cumulative effects. I’d like to talk a little bit quickly about the linkages between an increase in flood risk and increase in drought risk. When you log the trees, you will have more snow in the cut block because you suppress the snow interception. You don’t have a canopy that intercepts the snow when the snow is intercepted by the canopy that intercepted the snow amounts to as much as 30% of the annual snowfall.
And it has a chance once it is intercepted to evaporate and be lost back to the atmosphere. You log the trees, you’ve got as much as 30% more snow on the ground in these cut blocks, but then now you have more energy from long wave and shortwave radiation, et cetera that is available to melt that snow. The snow and the cut block melts earlier and faster and most of the time and more synchronized ways. But when you lose that snow earlier from the cut blocks from the better parts of the watersheds which have been heavily logged, you lose that to the channel system and out to the ocean. But that’s during the spring season, during the melt season. But that’s at the expense of the recharge of the groundwater because under the trees the snow pack melt slower and had a chance to infiltrate into the soil and therefore replenishes the groundwater table, which becomes handy during the dry period of the year in the late summer and early fall all the way until end of march where the new snow pack starts actually melting.
Therefore, an increase in high flows caused by the clear-cut logging automatically causes an increase in drought risk because we losing that amount of snow critical for the recharge of the groundwater table quickly to the rivers out to the ocean at the expense of recharging groundwater and therefore much needed during the low flows for fish and for water supply and for irrigation. This linkage between increase in drought risk, increase of flood risk causes an increase in drought risk, rarely talked about, rarely talked about, but the other thing that has been revealed in recent literature that the regrowth of the replanted coniferous trees, the replanted coniferous trees are actually consuming as much as 50% more groundwater for regrowth than the older trees that were there before logging. And that in itself exacerbates the drought.
Jenny:
That’s incredible.
Younes:
Roads, forest roads, the forestry roads, the dense network of forest roads intercept subsurface runoff through the cat banks, but that’s also at the expense of recharging groundwater, right?
Jenny:
Yeah, yeah, I would call that in geophysical terms, constructive or destructive interference. In this case, we’re having so many layers of destructive interference on the landscape.
Younes:
I joined the University of British Columbia in the faculty of forestry from civil engineering and started doing my work and quickly I realized that the international science and forest hydrology community misguided themselves by an experimental design that is uncontrolled. It does not isolate the effect of forest disturbance or logging on the floor regime. And in the process we have underestimated, dramatically, the effect of the forest disturbance on all of its forms, particularly clear-cutting, obviously on hydrology in general, but floods and droughts in particular.
Bob:
It’s a very interesting and good connection between floods and droughts. Dave, I think you had your hand up.
David:
I did want to, first of all, thank you, Younes, for his and his students and colleagues work since about 2010 on and including. This range of effects of clear-cut logging on hydrology of forested areas. It’s really transformed the literature. They took a lot of flack initially from critics and they successfully shot them all down. It’s really quite a stunning story. If you did nothing else Younes for the rest of your life, just that one set of research on the effects of flood duration, frequency, and magnitude alone would make your reputation wonderful.
Younes:
Thank you. David. We have been publishing for the last, since 2004 on this new paradigm that has turned forest hydrology on its heels on a foundational basis, which is causal inference and experimental design and isolating the effect of a treatment. And basically suddenly in 2009 we published one of our key papers entitled Forest and Floods, A New Paradigm Sheds Lights on Age Old Controversies. We have called in the abstracts to revisit everything we thought we knew about the effect of disturbing the forest on hydrology in general because that experimental design is used not just to evaluate the effect of logging on floods and droughts. It’s used to evaluate the effect of disturbing the forest on every aspect of hydrology below surface, above surface. Water quality, water quantity, extremes, averages, and it’s all, in my opinion, flawed.
And one of the reasons, David, and why we have been able to push our publication not without a fight for every publication we submit, it’s a big fight, but we end up prevailing because what we advocate for is very well established outside forest hydrology. Even in the wider hydrology and especially in the climate change science, these other communities use exactly what I have been advocating for and the only reason why I landed in the situation I’m landed in is because I came to forest hydrology as an outsider.
David:
Yes.
Jenny:
This is, we talked about the compartmentalization of all of our work and this is why this is all so important. Jason, we’ve got to give you some time here. How about, I think this is a really good way to talk about the policies and the laws that are potentially impeding our ability to not be experimental with things like clear-cut logging. Please help us out.
The Regulatory Process For Gravel and Clearcut Logging
Jason:
Yeah, sure. I think I’d follow up on both speakers. David’s talk about gravel pits is really interesting in the regulatory perspective because we have a tiered system of review and evaluation supposedly based on risk and gravel pits are typically what kind of in the middle tier, what they’re called a registration. The oversight both by the department and by the public itself and the ability for the public to participate is limited in relation to registration activities under the law. This is also an interesting area because also municipalities have a say in how gravel pits are approved, in which case a lot of concerned citizens and they have water concerns, traffic, dust concerns, noise concerns, a whole suite of concerns around these developments, and they’re kind of pushed towards the municipal approval process. And really we see that often litigated. There’s actually a court of appeal decision back in 2020 where they challenged a gravel pit and successfully challenged it in such a way that they said, this is the type of activity under the law that requires an impact assessment, an environmental impact assessment.
And the court of appeal agreed with that interpretation and quickly after that, the legislation was amended to say, no, it’s not required for these gravel pits. It’s just indicative of, because there is so much push to get that gravel out and whether it’s in riparian areas or even they’ve suggested over time instream, right in the channels and really problematic. And I think that the level of oversight and the function of these systems is kind of often overlooked or lost, especially on a cumulative effects analysis that would have that impact on waterway as David was mentioning. And then also on the forestry side, I think the water quantity and water quality issues that arise around forestry is really I think a key indicator of how laws aren’t great at dealing with complex systems. We treat forestry as forestry, we treat water as water, we treat energy as energy and we kind of parcel everything out.
And there’s numerous, numerous occasions where you look at the law and you’re saying, well, this isn’t very scientifically sound in terms of how we’re looking at our regulatory system. And certainly from a water quality perspective, things like non-point source pollution, whether that’s from a variety of impacts on the landscape, forestry or otherwise, we don’t really deal with or regulate or manage those systems very well. I think it’s really a variety of examples here that really the regulatory system could be doing a lot better and yet we aren’t quite there how we approach these things.
Jenny:
Go ahead, Dave.
David:
Jason, do you want to elaborate a little bit on regulation with regard to the Impact Assessment Act federally and what sounds to me like a threat to basically evaporate it, what is your take on that?
Jason:
Right. For context, the Impact Assessment Act was brought in many years ago. Certain circles of, call it Bill 69 or the No Pipelines Act or something like that, but it’s been an act for quite a while. There was a constitutional challenge which was partially successful around the ACT itself, it was revamped. And there is talk again of limiting its scope and application, really focusing on what the federal government really focuses on in terms of its federal jurisdiction. Under our constitution, of course, they are constitutionally the jurisdiction that deals with inland fisheries, coastal and inland fisheries. It’s an interesting area when we start talking about water and jurisdiction under the constitution because clearly the federal government has jurisdiction there. I think that’s one of the challenges. But I’ve heard the same thing, David. It kind of time will tell, but it sounds like the current federal government is looking to fast track certain projects. We don’t know yet what those look like, but certainly there’s been ongoing pressure to undermine the Impact Assessment Act from a variety of places.
David:
Yeah, I think the federal government may be basically sticking their hands in the tar baby because they are constitutionally required to protect inland waters, and that’s where a huge part of the damage occurs from these resource development projects. Any attempt, it strikes me, and you can correct me here, it strikes me that that’s the place where the strongest attacks for better review of projects could be directed
Jason:
For sure. Yeah. The Fisheries Act and its related regulation and protection of fisheries and fish habitat is something that is clearly federal and really should be taking front and center in how we develop these resources and impacts on the landscape. It’s not easy to do it obviously because of the provincial federal push and pull around these things, but you’re right, in terms of the impact assessment and the federal role and how they approach these systems, there were these approvals and regulations and assessments themselves.
David:
One place taking into account Younes’s excellent review of the effects of clear-cut logging on hydrology. That’s a classic place where a very obvious place where a great deal of pressure can be added. And I’d throw in the Species at Risk Act as it applies to fish. I’d love to see litigation to protect that act because it’s being systematically subverted by DFO who’s responsible for enforcing it.
Jenny:
That’s right.
David:
We have all this logging going on, having immense environmental impacts to a lot of federal jurisdiction, and there is no federal input virtually whatsoever to how logging is conducted in the provinces.
Key Takeaways
Jenny:
This is such an important point, and I want to be respectful of everybody’s time here. I think this would be a great time for us to do just some takeaways from this conversation. Maybe I’ll lead that off. And then Bob, I’ll let you follow up and I really hope that you guys are up for another conversation. I think we have some more to unpack here, but I’m just going to offer some of my key takeaways. Dave, you finished on something that is near and dear to my heart. The Species at Risk Act and federal intervention I think is something that is absolutely necessary. We keep talking about this from a provincial level, and ultimately these are interprovincial issues. The things that are decided in BC impact our snowpack in Alberta and Alberta impacts what we do in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, or can do, I should say, with respect to water.
To me, one of the levers I see is the Species at Risk Act. There are some sites that are meant to be removed from the landscape from a fossil fuel perspective, starting as soon as 2026. There’s supposed to be some reporting required from both the Cold Lake sub-regional plan and the Bistro Lake sub-regional plan. And those are precedent setting laws as far as I’m concerned. We should be exploring that in terms of: where is the federal government ensuring that this is being enforced? If we need to go that route. But obviously from the provincial standpoint, first I did want to talk about this problem of limited participation and processes being put towards the municipalities. Jason, yes, this is definitely how I see these problems being compartmentalized and not problems being pushed to different people and making it very difficult for the public that has a very valid concern to be able to intervene in these processes.
And then as you were talking about, Younes, as I would say, these destructive interference processes that were allowed to happen from the individual processes being analyzed separately and not looking at how they coalesce and how those impacts are hurting us. And then the last thing I want to say is just around Bob’s comment about what are the alternatives we have? For example, we can build homes without deforesting anymore. We don’t need clear-cut logging, it is not something that is necessary for our future development, and that also impacts concrete and everything else in those ways. There are 3D printing capable structures now that could be much more energy efficient than going in these routes. They are not proven. That’s the last thing I want to say is Younes pointing out that we’ve never been in a place where we’ve known that clear-cut logging is a value, why are we still practicing these routes? And again, that’s where I think the feds can come in. Okay. That’s lots from me. Bob, do you want to offer some of your key takeaways before we pass it around?
Bob:
Before we get to that, I wanted to have Jason speak a little bit about basin transfer. I know we’re a little bit over time, but that had come up as one of the things we were going to talk about today, even though it’s kind of off topic. Jason, do you have any comments on that?
Jason:
There’s probably a lot to talk about in terms of inter basin transfers because there’s proposed changes to the law around inter basin transfers that are being considered right now. Basically inter basin transfers. There’s seven major basins in Alberta. I think that number is right currently under the law there’s restrictions on that and rightly so, because everything from invasive species to biochemistry and other factors of transporting one surface water body to another surface water body is fraught with risk. There are some changes afoot there. Currently, any inter basin transfer requires a special act of the legislature after the minister has done some public consultation and they’re looking to change that. I think a lot of people have it high on their radar in terms of a concern they would have. The risks versus the rewards and the notion of just living within your watershed, understanding that we have a lot of conservation of water and efficiency of water use that we could pursue before we start shifting massive amounts of water between basins is I think one of the key messages that I think needs to be pushed forward because those risks, I mean, oftentimes we very much learn that we think we can manage all these risks until we can’t, and then it’s kind of the invasive species lesson.
We pretend that we can manage it, but in fact, it always comes to pass. I think that’s one of the key areas around inter basin transfers, and certainly I think there’s going to be an opportunity to talk more about those risks and around the legislation and how they might be managed moving forward.
Bob:
Well, in terms of my take, my takeaways, this has been a fascinating discussion, and I love the connections between what everybody has been talking about and not just as one example, the sediment into the stream from logging. Not only does it make flooding worse because it clogs up all the gravel, but it makes the most productive area, as Dave was pointing out, even less or less productive because it’s clogging up all the gravel and you don’t have a productive and aquatic system. A fascinating discussion. I think we probably could have another four or five podcasts out of this on these issues. You’ll probably be hearing from us, inviting you to some other discussion that relates to this in one fashion or another. I’ll pass that on to whoever wants to go next. Dave, would you like to talk about what you thought of this?
David:
First of all, it was very eye-opening and interesting to me. I think what I’d just like to point out is that everyone has indicated what the problems are and the solutions are not going to be easy. In fact, there are no solutions ultimately because our population is well over the carrying capacity of the earth. There’s nothing we can really do about that. We have to somehow reduce our impact, which means in many people’s eyes at least reducing our standard of living. And I think I love going out to the woods and walking the streams and studying them, but what I really need to focus on is how we can do things better. And those options are going to be quite limited.
Jenny:
Yeah, I hear you. It’s an excellent point, David. We’re coming to a head with the bank account that we’ve been drawing from on Earth here, and it’s going to come very quickly to a head if we’re not at least ready for some options, alternatives, let’s say. Okay, Younes.
Bob:
That is one of the podcasts we’re thinking of in the future, probably in September, about living within limits because it’s not just the water supply, it’s not just the water quality, but as Dave you mentioned, it goes well beyond that in terms of what our standard of living is and how we can manage that.
Jenny:
Okay, Younes, your turn please.
Younes:
Thank you, Jenny. Land use and land management regulation and policies are designed everywhere to empower the industry, but that is at the expense of the environment and society and taxpayers. Our landscape everywhere in Canada, not just in BC and Alberta, is at a much higher risk than we were led to believe by government and industry. High risk to floods, high risk to droughts, and risk to wildfire.
Jenny:
Agreed. Yeah.
Younes:
Especially more so under the unfortunate global warming. And therefore, I think Albertans, British Colombians, and Canadians in general are going to be subject for decades to come to a higher risk of these extremes. And I think we’re going to turn into a society of legal action and legal cases against the government in particular, and therefore taxpayers and against the industries of all kinds. Let me say this and end with this. The climate change science community has been developing a new field for the last 20 years and rather aggressively called attribution science. And attribution science in a nutshell, evaluates the extent to which a particular heat dome or a particular wildfire or a particular flood or a particular drought is actually caused by the pollutants of the industry polluting the atmosphere or the industries that are acting on the land and logging the trees. It is that same attribution science that I have been developing independently for the last 20 years in my research lab. And if we do not wake up to this unfortunate situation, I think we’re turning into a society in Canada, like in the US where everybody is suing everybody else, and the science out there is going to come in and make the case, in my opinion, for the plaintiffs in many of these cases.
Bob:
Jason, is this a situation where only the lawyers win?
Jason:
I was about to say, I’ll put aside the standing of my profession and what it aims to gain from that comment. But yeah, I think the interesting part for me is there are regulatory innovations that can take place to start addressing these things, whether it’s a risk management approach, but a cumulative effects approach to how we deal with these systems and recognizing that we have to be precautionary in how we approach these things to systems of governance, where community values and our relationship with nature are better expressed in our laws, in our decision making processes. Because I think these are the things that we’ve kind of lost in the framing of technocratic decision making process where somebody in an office somewhere is assessing risk in isolation to a specific small activity, small activity, and makes a decision on that basis. And I think there is an opportunity there to put a positive or an optimistic viewpoint around how our systems can change and how it can help us get to where we need to be.
Jenny:
Yeah. Younes, are you referring to this scientific study that came out in nature.com that highlights the ability for climate scientists to assign [climate damage] cost to carbon majors? Is that the…
Younes:
That’s one of a dozen papers that have been talking about this. That was just the latest, absolutely. Yes, yes.
Jenny:
Yeah. Yeah. I was really excited about seeing that. I agree with you. It’s this global assignment of blame and to acknowledge it as criminal in nature. Quite honestly. Incredible. This is just it. We are at a tipping point in so many ways, both positive and negative, and let’s use what we know to come together and push back in a way that brings us together rather than divides us. As I think you guys were highlighting.
We’re hoping to have somebody from the insurance industry speak in this podcast as well, because it’s going to be a big piece of what’s going to move us forward. There’s no better calculator out there than one from the insurance industry, I’m sure. Okay. Anything from anyone before we wrap? Thank you so much. I realise we’ve gone well over. I really appreciate everybody’s time. Thank you so much for staying late, guys. We’ll take care for now. We’ll chat soon. Hopefully. See you again in this Take care for now.
Bob:
Thank you everyone. Great discussion. Thank you everyone so much. Great to meet you.