This is episode 10 of a miniseries on Water in Southern Alberta with co-host Bob Morrison, discussing topics such as water security, irrigation history, resource extraction impacts, and climate change. Guests include Dr. David Swann, a retired medical doctor and former politician and founder of the Fish Creek Watershed Association (FCWA), who emphasizes the importance of water quality and quantity, and Jason Unger, executive director of the Environmental Law Centre, who discusses legal frameworks and environmental accountability. The conversation highlights challenges in water management, including the need for better monitoring, compliance, and public engagement to ensure sustainable water use and protect aquatic ecosystems. This conversation underscores the urgency of addressing water issues in the face of climate change and the importance of community involvement in water policy decisions.
Reintroductions to Dr. David Swann and Jason Unger
Jenny (00:00:05):
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 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. And 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.
Hello Bob, how are you doing today?
Bob:
Pretty good. How are you, Jenny?
Jenny:
Good, thank you. We were always trying to get through so much. I forgot to just slow down and say hello. Yes, thank you so much. This has been a great start to the second half of the water, sorry, water in Southern Alberta’s miniseries. How do you think it’s going? Bob, are you pleased so far?
Bob:
We’ve learned even more than we didn’t know, and we’re starting to get down to the tough questions about water security. What about the aquatic environment and what does the future hold? I’m looking forward to this
Jenny:
Very much so. Yes, and we have some incredible people who’ve already participated and I’m super excited about hearing from the people we have today and ongoing super good turnout and great dialogue so far. We went through the history of irrigation, the impacts of resource extraction on water, the water act and licence transfer system, the water cycle and modelling watershed and lake stewardship, dry land, irrigated and ranch, land farming and the impacts of climate change on water with respect to insurance. That was the first half of the program. We then met with Brad Stelfox to speak about land use limits and Dr. Dave Sauchyn to discuss how we cope with Climate Change in Southern Alberta. I encourage everyone to listen to each of those and this one of course. I’m going to start with Dr. David Swann to welcome Dr. David Swann back to the studio. Hi David, how are you today?
David:
All good, thanks Jenny. Great to be with you.
Jenny:
Great. Firstly, Dr. David Swann is a friend and collaborator of, and Bob and me. David is a retired medical doctor who focused on preventative medicine and he became a politician. He was the leader of the Alberta Liberal Party and the leader of the opposition in Alberta legislature from December, 2008 until September, 2011. He returned as an interim leader of the Alberta Liberal Party on February 1st, 2015. That’s very specific and resigned, sorry, led the party through the 2015 provincial election and actually David is the last liberal elected official in the Alberta legislature, that’s something to think of. It’s very interesting. And he was also a guest on the show with Brad Stel Fox and Dr. Norm Campbell to discuss the harms of coal mining as well. Well, thank you so much for being here, David. Any other things you’d like to add in terms of your introduction today, please?
David:
Well, as a public health officer, I was certainly very concerned about water quality, water quantity in the context of this podcast, and part of our responsibility, of course was to monitor water quality as far as potable water was concerned and enforce regulations when we found any risks to the water supply that people were drinking. As a politician, I was involved in a number of issues as the environment critic in association with both air quality and water quality concerns around oil and gas activity and inter basin transfers for example, which I hope to say a few words about. And in the last five years, I kicked off a watershed stewardship group called the Fish Creek Watershed Association, in which we have really endeavored to get a clear handle on one of the tributaries of the Bow River outside of Calgary up to the Kananaskis Park, how significant they are in the terms of the question of water security. And I guess I want to ask at the outset, security for whom, because this government seems to prefer and prioritize water security for irrigation and commercial interests over the instream flow needs, and that’s a serious concern for those of us who recognize that the environment has only the advocates as citizens that decide to step up. The fish don’t speak, the biodiversity doesn’t speak, we have to recognize limits if we’re going to protect the instream flow needs and healthy biodiversity related to that.
Jenny:
Wonderfully said. David, thank you so much for being here. I’m really excited to get into this conversation with you, but before we do that, let’s make sure we re-welcome Jason Unger back to the stage. Thank you so much for joining us, Jason. Jason was also on the podcast in this miniseries. I poked him in September when I saw him in person and said, we’re going to be flagging you again, and here he is. I’m really pleased that you’re back with us Jason. Just a reminder that Jason is the executive director and general counsel of the Environmental Law Centre and Alberta based charity focused on legal education and environmental natural resource law reform. The ELC’s mission is to educate and champion for strong environmental law so that all Albertans can enjoy clean water, clean air, and a healthy environment. Jason worked in the private practice before this in both Edmonton and Calgary and he’s worked for Alberta’s Court of Queen Bench as well. Jason also sits on the Alberta Water Council, which is a multi-stakeholder organization that provides advice and input on provincial water policy. Very pleased to know that we didn’t quite catch that the first time we interviewed you, this is wonderful to have you. Jason, thank you so much for participating again.
Jason:
Thanks very much for having me. It’s a great and very timely, I guess water’s always timely but extra timely as there’s changes to the water laws and policy as ongoing issues that we see on the landscape and the water.
Jenny:
Yes, in so many ways it’s becoming more urgent. Both the discussion and the changes and the proposed ways of managing those changes are very urgent. They require urgent attention. Thank you so much for acknowledging that. And before we get into it, Jason, do you mind just giving a little bit of background like we offer David, just how you came into this work and a little bit about what you’re doing in these roles? Thank you.
Jason:
Sure. Yeah, I’ve been a lawyer for quite a while back to the early two thousands and since the beginning I’ve always had a very keen interest in environmental law and how we manage our natural resources and for the protection of the environment. It’s why I went into law school in the first place, and I’ve really focused on the long-term, looking at things around water loss specifically. It’s always been an interest of mine, everything from federal fisheries, law impact assessment, species at risk, all of which touch Alberta’s waterways as well as how we manage the natural resources on the landscape itself because they have direct implications for aquatic health, whether we’re talking about diversions in water quantity or the water quality. What we’re putting in the water from our wastewater streams, both industrial and municipal and otherwise, both from point sources and non-point sources.
I’ve had a long history. I have been on part of the Water Council, which is a consensus-based decision-making organization that was struck as a result of the Water for Life strategy, which dates back a couple of decades now, which has the typical three pillars around social, economic and environmental outcomes. Although they’re phrased in a bit different manner, but I’ve been a long [time] advocate for accountability for environmental outcomes and that goes for water law as well as water policy, whether it’s around our wetlands or our rivers or our lakes. There’s a whole host of law and policy that applied to them and I’ve been active in that area for a long time, advocating for water laws that ensure accountability on the environmental outputs or outcomes that we all want to see.
Jenny:
Incredible. Thank you so much, Jason. This is great. This has just been a wonderful experience, I have to say, to meet all the people working in this space. Okay, we’re going to let Bob lead off the questions today. I’ll just offer some comments as we go. Thank you so much. Bob, take it away.
What are we doing well and what are the areas of concern in terms of water security in Southern Alberta?
Bob (00:10:15):
In terms of water security, making sure that we actually do have and how much water and good quality water for everyone, not just in particular special interests. Where are we doing well in Southern Alberta and where are we facing some serious problems that we need to deal with? Jason, why don’t I start with you?
Jason:
It’s a great question and a huge question. I think it’s where are we doing well? I think the challenge is as we’ve evolved as a society, as we’ve evolved in terms of our infrastructure around irrigation and use, I think there’s a lot of different things that come into play there. The history is a big piece of it because as you may have talked about previously, we have a legal system where the rights of historic users of water have those embedded rights to divert that water. And as the climate changes, as water supplies change, the question becomes, well, how do we manage this system when there’s ongoing growth in the population of Alberta? There’s ongoing expectations of growth for the economy and how do we ensure that we’re not undermining the instream flow needs of our rivers and all the ecosystems that rely on them, whether that’s floodplains or fisheries or other things.
How do we make sure that is considered in a system that’s really modelled around licensing diversions? The issue of security is really high. Obviously the licence holders want the security of the water supply to know that they can use that water, but at the same time when there’s a shortage of supply, the legal system is not really well set up for dealing with that. We have a long history of water law that drives us towards a situation of when there is shortages of supply, we have to look to government to really focus on protecting the environmental flows and what measures of accountability we have to reflect that security, the instream security I guess I’ll call it, or the security for those flows in water quality I think is one of the key issues and one of the key challenges we have now and into the future for sure. You asked what do I think we’re doing? Well, I think we’re getting there in terms of starting to look at how much we’re diverting, how much is returning, how much we’re actually using. I think we have a long way to go still there, but I think we have a huge way to go in terms of understanding what it means for the aquatic environment, what type of security, what does security look like for the fish and other organisms living in their aquatic ecosystems and on the landscape itself that’s fed by the water of course.
Bob:
Water supply has caught people’s attention, obviously, which is a good thing. But you mentioned the legal system, it’s based upon that principle of prior allocation or first in time, first in the older licence gets first grabs at the water, but when it comes down to a real shortage in Southern Alberta, at least generally they don’t use the first in time, first in they use some sort of a cooperative agreement. Is that really the way we’re headed? Is first in time first in just simply not workable or untenable?
Jason:
Well, I think that’s a good question. I think the challenge with first in time, first in in the time of shortage as we’ve seen illustrated is then you have to turn to non-legal or less certain avenues, right? Voluntary agreements between licence holders to share the water. I think the outstanding question in my mind is how long will fit for last or the first in time, first right allocation system last in that structure? I think you could still have a system whereby priorities to water can still be granted based on a historic allocation, but then I think we need to start looking at systems where we formalise a system where, okay, there’s not enough water for everyone. How are we going to share it? Obviously picking winners and losers in water is not an acceptable solution because obviously that can’t be an outcome. I think as time goes by and the pressures go by on our water system, the first and time first and right system is kind of being maintained, but at the same time when we’re always having to resort to voluntary agreements on the side, then really fit for isn’t really being maintained because no one’s going to be calling priority, or if they do, then the system’s going to be really under restrained.
Under our legal system, there’s the ability for a licence holder to call priority, which means they get all their licence allocation before the next lower priority licence holder. In that type of system, if that priority call happens, then I think the real strain and kind of emergency happens and there’s legislation, our legislation does allow for the minister to essentially declare an emergency and say the priority system is not being applied, and that was kind of contemplated in 2024, but didn’t have to occur. I think that the whole FITFIR system and the allocation system and security has to be a part of a broader dialogue that we have as a society and who has the voice for instream flows or fish and that type of thing is one of the key concerns that the Environmental Law Center has as we talk about healthy aquatic ecosystems as a core foundation of a healthy and vibrant society with a high quality of life.
Jenny:
Right? Yeah. Can’t really have a life without high quality water. Just so you guys know, David is on my phone, we can tap him with the question in the background here.
Bob:
I’m ready for my follow-up question with him because we’ve talked about water supply that David’s experience has been mainly in the water quality area in terms of being a medical doctor and he mentioned the whole issue with potable water. David, how secure are we in terms of water quality from what you’ve experienced, both in terms of your medical background and what you’ve seen on Fish Creek?
David:
Well, I think it’s an important question that relates very much to how much we’re willing to pay Bob. You’re increasingly degrading upstream activities in our water sources and having to pay increasingly expensive water treatment both before drinking and after wastewater goes through the treatment plants. We are tremendously wasteful of water still in this province, and we are allowing activities upstream that very much increase the cost of creating potable water.
Jenny:
Right. Go ahead. I’ll just add, would you say ranching in the headwaters for one or oil and gas activities or roads or logging, all of those things are impacting water quality, would you say?
David:
All of the above. Indeed. Anything that creates more sediment, more organic material, more chemicals including pesticides and fertilizers, all of these add to the challenges I guess, of making sure we have safe drinking water.
Jenny:
Did you have a follow up?
How are we monitoring water quantity and quality?
Bob (00:18:39):
Yeah, and this gets into the whole question of monitoring what’s going on out there, and they do measure a number of water quality issues, but there are a lot that simply are not measured very often if they’re measured at all. Things like pharmaceuticals, the, you just mentioned that and I forgot what the other one was.
Jenny:
Fertilizers.
Bob:
Fertilizers, exactly. That sort of thing. Do we really have the monitoring system, David, to be able to keep track of what’s happening in the rivers and dealing with the quality in the streams themselves?
David:
Well, I take your point, Bob, especially with respect to pharmaceuticals and point source pesticides and herbicides, which we may not pick up entirely because they’re so expensive, these tests that it, it’s intermittent testing that goes on. But in general, I think we do have very high quality water because of the very expensive treatment programs that we have for our water supplies. I would just add that the water flows have declined 40% in the South Saskatchewan River Basin according to John Pomeroy over the last a hundred years. And when water quantity declines and it has 40%, as I said, that means it’s much more concentrating the pollutants and it takes as I’ve said a much more expensive treatment protocol.
Jenny:
Of course.
Bob:
How can you dilute the pollution if you keep taking the water out?
Jenny:
That’s right. Yeah.
Bob:
Jenny, you’re up next, I think.
Jenny:
Oh, sure. Okay. Can we talk a bit about water monitoring and reporting, Jason, because you and I just were discussing, we attended, we attended a meeting together in September in Fort Chippewan First Nation about water security and all I heard that week was about monitoring and it just made my stomach sink because monitoring isn’t mitigating, and as you were alluding to in your opening here, you’re seeing a lot of gaps in the ways that we’re measuring and monitoring, and then also do we understand the impacts of how we’re using water on the aquatic habitat and system function. I know that’s a big question, but can you speak to a little bit around just this, what’s happening in terms of reporting and monitoring and any gaps that you see that are meaningful for us to think about going forward to close?
Jason:
That is right. Yeah. Well, it is a big issue and I think, monitoring is one part of a broader system that you have to have in place compliance with monitoring and reporting is a challenge I think for the government in terms of licences, in terms of the stream flows themselves and water quality being a key indicator that you’re going to have a variety of things that you have to monitor there, including emerging issues like PFASs and other chemicals that are continuing to show direct impacts on the aquatic environment, specifically salmon species for instance. And I think the challenge, the government actually in the Bill seven, they are amending some areas where they’re trying to expand the monitoring and reporting requirements, and I think the challenge there is to really have the capacity to ensure the water use reporting and that type thing is accurate and actually enforced and every reason’s complying with it in terms of the industrial licensed users.
But I think that’s different from, for instance, the water quality challenges around water monitoring, because oftentimes we’re very reactive in terms of our approaches. Our view at the Environmental Law Centre is dilution isn’t the solution to pollution. Pollution prevention is the first order of business. I think one of the key aspects is we need systems and accountability around how we can monitor, but also how we’re going to respond to those shifts in water quality and even reporting on enforcement issues. Certainly up north, a major issue happened when a leak from tailings wasn’t reported by the regulator to the community downstream, and that raised a lot of alarm bells for people. I guess the regulator thought it was of minimal risk or whatever, but there was some decision making there and accountability around how we monitor water quality and how we report to the public, and then on the backend, how we manage the landscape for a variety of very challenging, admittedly challenging areas of water quality and diminishing water quality, whether it’s nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen or other more targeted pollutants coming from the landscape or points or submissions or wastewater streams.
How prepared is Alberta for an oil sand’s tailing breach?
Jenny (00:24:00):
Right. You’ve made me think about with, let’s be specific with the oil sand, if there was a major breach, do we have a plan in place for those types of things? Is that something that you
Jason:
Yeah, well, I think there’s probably a variety of emergency plans that are sitting there, whether they’re fully operational, if an incident actually happened, for sure there’s been very large dam breaches in the recent past both in BC and Alberta in the Obed mine for instance. I think an ongoing challenge for sure is there’s a high risk and we try to mitigate those risks in terms of having regulatory standards in place, but we’ve seen witness to those bigger issues failing and resulting in these big incidents. The long-term planning and monitoring and compliance issues are key there in terms of ensuring the safety of downstream communities for sure.
Jenny:
Yeah, the compliance, you’re right, I heard a lot about monitoring and not a lot about compliance that weekend, that or a couple of days that we spent together. Same question for you, David. Can you outline as well what you think are some of the ways that we’re missing in terms of reporting and monitoring with respect to conservation objectives?
David:
Well, yes I can. In fact, the whole schedule of notifying organizations across the province when there’s a low flow advisory, for example, was really inadequate when we first started up the Fish Creek Watershed Association, and only through we start to get actual reporting when we should be reducing our demands on that Fish Creek watershed system. I know that the other environments and protected areas is underfunded. It’s been underfunded for the last 15 years since I was in politics, and they struggle to not only capture the data but have someone have the time to go through it. They operate in general on a complaint basis. If someone is doing something that appears to be damaging to the watershed, they’ll investigate it. But in terms of reporting the consumption of licences and the return flows that, for example, the irrigators are supposed to be returning to the watershed, it’s very hit miss and everything I hear is that, well, when I’ve asked, they suggested I go online and look at the numbers myself because they simply don’t nothing to properly monitor both consumption and return flows to the rivers.
Jenny:
Right. I’m just going to get you to expand on that concept for folks that aren’t as familiar. When I hear that, David, I hear that you have this licence allocation, but we don’t necessarily know when that water was used and if any of it was actually passed through and the cases where it is a licence that they own the volume outright where it isn’t expected to flow through. I don’t know if I’m saying that. Well, Jason, but do you understand my question, David? Can you outline that a little bit more for people?
David:
I think what you’re asking is whether or not we know how much people are taking, if they have a licence for so much volume, whether they’re actually taking that amount or whether they may be taking more. In many cases they’re taking less in southern Alberta, but that’s partly because we’ve closed the Saskatchewan River Basin since 2007, and we realized at some point there that we had over allocated the river basins south of Red Deer River. We do need to have more handle on the reporting that is supposed to be in the large users monthly, but how much do we audit the reporting and how accurate is it? And in terms of the return flows to the rivers, I don’t think we’re monitoring that at all. And there’s some suggestion now that the irrigators are using what’s supposed to go back into the river for expanding the irrigation in Southern Alberta. Those kinds of monitoring and oil and gas use of water, for example, isn’t being monitored. We really seriously need to look at this critical resource called water and treat it as the vital resource that it is for all of us or we’re going to be in serious trouble, I believe, in the next decade, if not now.
Jenny:
Yeah. Thank you. Okay, your turn, Bob.
Bob:
Okay, David, you’ve mentioned over allocation, which is a big problem in the South Saskatchewan system in the 1990s, early 1990s, the province took the approach of we’ve got a problem in terms of allocation, let’s cap the irrigation districts in terms of how much acreage they can actually irrigate and give them the opportunity to improve how many acres they can irrigate by taking efficiency measures. The government changed its mind later on when the South Saskatchewan Water Management plan was put together and decided they were going to cap everybody that is no new licences and go to a trading system where you buy and sell water rights as opposed to the water, and then you have to pay for that. Those seem like two very different approaches, and it gets into the thing that David raised about who are we managing the water for. Jason, do you have any experience or understanding of those two different ways of managing the overall allocation problem?
Jason:
Well, sure. Yeah. The water transfer system, the water allocation transfer system came into place primarily. I mean it did exist to a degree previously, but in the Water Act itself in 1999. The ability to transfer a portion of your allocation to another water user, water user, it has evolved since then. And certainly I think the intention is to use the allocation that was granted and intensify the use of that water. That could happen through, for instance, expansion of irrigation or otherwise, or through a system where you’re selling water, maybe you’re not using your whole allocation and you’re able to sell part of your water to another party. And I think that’s one of the areas where there has been a lot of transparency around those transactions and a lot of questions arise because no one pays for water in Alberta other than the cost of moving that water or potentially treating the water as well.
Obviously that’s a significant cost for potable water, but there’s no raw water cost in Alberta, the fact that people are now able to sell those things is an interesting notion that there was of reset button in an auction around water or anything like that. I think there’s a variety of things at play there in terms of we have limited allocation in the South, we closed applications, we want to grow still, and we’re going to intensify uses within those allocations, and the question becomes, well, when does that have an impact on the environment itself and the long-term sustainability of that system? It brings in things about water waste, water conservation, water efficiency, all these things as well, and how we can get water back into the river because we know that overall in low flow years that we’re not meeting the instream flow needs as they would be scientifically derived. We’re just doing the best we can in a system that’s highly allocated and we’re trying to intensify more water use within that allocation. I think that’s one of the key challenges is how do we move more water back into the stream at the essential times, recognizing that the pressures on the system are really significant and they’re only going to grow as we move forward.
A Price on Water
Bob (00:32:58):
You mentioned not charging for water for the actual taking the water out of a stream, and it seems like if you’re creating a water market, which was their intent, I gather at the province, you have to have some price on the actual water that you’re using. We have a price on oil, we have a price on gas, we have a price on forestry may not be perfect, but at least somebody is saying, okay, it’s going to cost you something that reflects presumably some market demand and also might reflect the cost of the environment. Is pricing actually viable for water?
Jason:
Right. Well, I would distinguish between the market price between two licence holders that are having their private agreement because we don’t know what those prices are. I think that’s one of the issues that the government actually has seen and is trying to address is that, well, there needs to be transparency so people know how much water is going to cost, aside from the fact that the water in Alberta has historically been owned by the province of Alberta. The notion of charging for that water has been raised in the past. The government has not gone down that route. In BC for instance, they have a price, a volumetric price for industrial water uses and certainly Alberta could do that if they wanted to and that would drive, and I think everyone would see that that would drive conservation because the more you’re using, the more cost it is and look for alternatives as well in terms of alternatives to potable water or high quality water.
I think there’s a variety of things that pricing can do. It’s also very contentious because people sometimes think that, for instance, using it in their home will cost more or that type of thing or using it from a water well or that type of thing. I think the overall trend though is you could price the more industrial uses and recover water and that could grow your capacity to deal with some of the monitoring and compliance issues that we’ve been talking about as well. I think one of the key things is that to truly manage and plan around water, you need a lot of resources in terms of capacity within government to actually deal with those things, and I think that’s one of the outstanding challenges, how you pay for that. It has to be a priority for the government moving forward in my view.
Interbasin Transfers Create Many Risks
Bob (00:35:40):
Right. Jason, you mentioned the whole thing about getting more water and David, I think you mentioned inter basin transfers. That certainly is in some people’s view, the way that you solve water supply problems. I gather that the bill seven that’s going before the legislature at some point is going to be making it easier to deal with inter basin transfers. Am I correct on that and what impact are you expecting?
David:
Well, Jason may also have some important comments to make about basin transfers, but when I was in the legislature, it was a very serious matter to consider transferring water from one basin to another in terms of the biology, some of the species that are there and some of the contaminants that might be transferred. Invasive species in particular, a concern in fish species, bill seven, as some of many of the changes are said to improve water security, but they benefit a few large industries over some of the issues that Jason has raised, which is instream flow needs and maintaining some kind of flow that will protect species within the river. I would have to say that without a very good science and very rigorous debate, we should not be transferring water from one basin to another, and Bill seven is going to make it easier for both the legislature to pass such a motion if they were even going to address the issue because they wouldn’t have to address the issue if this new bill goes through.
It would be ministerial discretion. The other side of this though is my concern about the massive expansion of irrigation in Southern Alberta when we are already not meeting basic water conservation objectives in the South Saskatchewan basin. It’s appalling that the irrigation industry has managed to, without any major consultation with Albertans extracted significant funds up to almost $800 million from federal and provincial bodies to expand by up to 500,000 acres in Southern Alberta. The irrigation potential and no public debate, no public input, and in some cases no environmental impact assessments. They’re planning 10 new reservoirs or expansions of reservoirs and as I say, based on their calculations of saving water through canalization as opposed to open dikes, they feel they can meet the objectives of massive expansion of irrigation just through those savings and there’s very little evidence that we’ve seen that that’s going to be successful. Allowing that expansion and then transferring from the north to the south, not only is it extremely costly, but many more risks are involved than I think we’ve been led to believe.
Jenny:
Yes. Can I just get you to expand again on the, that you said we’re not meeting instream flow objectives. Can you just remind people what that means to me? It means we’re not making sure that the species at risk and aquatic habitat are sufficiently sustainable. Is that accurate?
David:
That’s correct. Water conservation objectives relate to 45% of natural flow, and that’s one indicator which we have not been meeting again in the South Saskatchewan River and Instream objectives are even more minimal flows in the creek creeks and rivers that we in many cases are not measuring and not enforcing. Once again, we need to properly fund upward environment to enable it to do adequate monitoring and put in place some accountability when these flows are not being supporting life in the rivers and the creeks.
Jenny:
Right. Compliance again, did you have something to add there, Bob?
Bob:
Yeah, I was going because David said Jason might have something to offer and I go on inter basin transfers and Bill seven and the whole question around how we manage water legally.
Jason:
Yes, yes. The water act is being amended through Bill 7 and it’s currently before the legislature. Currently under a current law, you require a special act of the legislature to transfer water between basins. Importantly for people in the north, the bill seeks to amalgamate fully the piece and the Athabasca Basin, in which case there would just be normal licences between basins, those river basins because it wouldn’t be considered an inter basin transfer. I think that’s a huge change and I’m not sure, I think it should be not going forward and really addressed in a more nuanced and direct way in terms of interacting with communities and getting their input in terms of that. The bill also enables what their framing lower risk transfers, and there’s some volumetric limits to those lower risk transfers, although there’s a lot of uncertainty about what those might be because they’re going to deal with a variety of the issues with the regulations.
But I think the challenge within any interbasin transfer, our starting point is, okay, the first thing is should be maintaining watershed integrity, meaning you should maintain the waters within your watershed because as soon as you start moving water between watersheds, you can move invasive species, you can move chemicals, you can move biological contaminants in a variety of other things, as well as it’s saying, well, we don’t have to worry about water because we’ll just shift it around and really not take ownership of our water use. And I think that’s to the same notion of being preventative and making sure we’re conserving water. I think we should be looking at our watersheds and the water available to us in a way that is more constrained and really dealing with the things that we need while maintaining a healthy aquatic ecosystem at the same time.
I think there are basin transfers for sure, but I think there’s a variety of ways where a higher level of assessment, a higher level of scrutiny has to be maintained. The current proposal does provide for the minister to hold public reviews of those lower risk transfers, but what a public review, for instance, should entail, it needs to be detailed because even with water allocation transfers, which are different, the language in the legislation currently provides for public review and what we’ve seen is that doesn’t really occur. We get notice of an application for a transfer, but then beyond that we don’t have much information about what it actually is transferred. That’s one of the challenges is a lot of the water act amendments are enabling with regulations and policy to come, but I think the risk is that you’re taking the guardrails off as soon as you enable those things, and really that’s one of the things that I think is a lot of risk to it, where the current system of special active legislature admittedly, is probably not the most efficient because you have to wait for the legislature to be in session and all these other things.
But I think there’s a need to ensure that decisions, because there are long-term impacts with these decisions are taken with the most full understanding and community input as you can have. That’s where I think these amendments are perhaps need to be amended further to reflect that.
Bob:
The devil’s in the detail.
Jason:
Yes.
Managing Source Point and Non-Point Contamination
Jenny (00:44:14):
When we interviewed Tim Romanow, he was talking about how that the water in, oh geez, I can’t remember the basin now I should remember this, but the water that comes from Montana that’s rerouted into the St. Mary, that that’s one of the original water base and transfers and it’s still going. Speaking of long term, that’s why I brought it up, is this is 115 year timeframe. This is how significant these decisions are and how this cannot be taken lightly. I also like that you’re bringing in the maintaining watershed integrity piece because there’s a lot of risks happening in these basins without any water transfers to put the watershed integrity at risk already. To layer on some allocations that you don’t know where they’re going, you don’t have the transparency, and then you’re going from basin to basin potentially spreading contamination. Let’s go into that a little bit, if that’s okay, is to talk about how we’re maintaining water quality. David already alluded to we have this unfortunate collision that seems to be happening where we have contaminants that are increasing and then water volume is decreasing, those potential concentrations are increasing with time the way we’re headed. Especially in a legal framework.
Can you speak Jason to what are the ways that we can mitigate harm to people based on what is coming based on the information we’ve just been discussing? Thanks.
Jason:
Well, I think that there’s two distinct areas where water quality are a challenge for regulatory systems. The one side is less of a challenge. They deal with point sources, those areas where, for instance, a wastewater stream from a municipality or wastewater stream from a specific industrial facility can be conditioned and monitored and reported on specifically in that area. The other bigger, more challenging area is what is often referred to as non-point source pollution, where it might just be things like nutrients or fertilizer on a landscape, which is then runs off during spring fresh or during a rain event or other contaminants that are getting in through aerial deposition or other things like that. The non-point source pollution area is really a challenging area to regulate, and a lot of different jurisdictions have tried to do that. I think Alberta does need to start dealing with non-point source pollution, more substantively around the impacts on surface water bodies, whether that’s lakes or rivers, because those often related to nutrients in the water, they can have adverse effects on water quality and actually can, they’re what drive algal blooms and blue green algae and toxins that result from those blooms.
I think there’s a lot of challenges around water quality. The government does have a system around in certain basins around surface water quality management frameworks they call ‘em, which is attempting to do with deal with the notion of cumulative effects on water quality. They do our, for instance in the south, they have various rivers where they’re monitoring water quality and they’re trying to have that ability to track changes and to respond to them. I think the challenge there again is it’s better to be preventative because trying to identify the impacts or the causes of specific water quality indicators and then actually mounting a management response to that is a huge legal challenge in terms of how to identify who’s responsible, who’s doing these things and that type of thing. I think we need to move to more proactive management of landscapes, more proactive and more higher quality wastewater stream systems. Obviously, over the decades we’ve done pretty well in major urban centers. Obviously we have the amount of tax base to pay for some of these wastewater treatment systems where we need to see that expanded to other areas of point source and non-point source pollution into the landscape, into the water bodies that we’re talking about.
Jenny:
Yeah. Did you want to expand on that, David, do you have anything to add?
David:
Yeah, I would thanks Jason for outlining that very well, and I guess the implication is not only increasing the revenues coming into government that they can fund the necessary experts in upward environment to do the monitoring and enforcement, it’s clear that this has not been a priority for governments in the last 15 or 20 years, and it has to be if we’re going to have real quality and sustained quantity of water for basic human uses as well as for commercial and agricultural use.
Jenny:
Okay, I see we are almost at the hour. I can’t believe how quickly this conversation went. Bob, I’ll let you lead off maybe into some takeaways and then a final question for these guides. Does that work for you?
Bob:
Sure. This has certainly raised a lot of issues, ones that are very troubling and very complex, particularly as Jason was mentioning on the water quality side. And I will follow up with one maybe a technical question, and Jason, I think you’re probably the person who might be able to answer it, but I gather that the City of Calgary in terms of managing water quality has some umbrella approval from the province now that includes both its wastewater treated water going into the rivers, and it also combines the non-point stormwater type of pollution that’s coming from the city. Is that a good idea or should we keep those two kinds of pollution separate? Because if you combine them, that tends to put the burden back onto these very expensive wastewater treatment systems that David had mentioned earlier on and takes the kind of relieves us as individual land managers, homeowners or businesses takes the pressure off on us in terms of being good stakeholders. Am I missing something here or is that really an issue?
Jason:
I think management of wastewater versus stormwater are both very important water quality issues that need to be dealt with. I think the challenge is that our historic treatment of stormwater in separate streams from wastewater resulted in the stormwater typically just going into the rivers and having consequences there, whether it’s salt from road salting to other things like other spills and other things on the landscape or sediment. I think the combining of those systems is important to capture as much pollution as we can. I think there are probably some other alternatives as well, but I know that certainly different municipalities have challenges on different aspects in terms of having the infrastructure to actually deal with both those issues. I know that some stormwater systems also can be managed somewhat by more of the outlets. You could put in more compact treatment systems or even systems of stormwater management where you’re trying to keep the stormwater from flowing into the river at least so quickly where you have natural infrastructure that can be used to treat those things.
I think again, it’s water management is an area where it’s complex and there’s so many, everything we do from an urban landscape perspective has a direct impact on our water quality downstream. Whether it’s moving our waste away from us or otherwise. I think those are the challenges that we face in terms of we still have relatively high water quality in terms of Alberta. We’re very lucky to be close to headwaters and not a lot of communities upstream, but I think it’s incumbent on us to take as much as we can in terms of minimizing our water footprint on the landscape or in the rivers.
David:
Okay.
Jenny:
Did you want to ask David one last final question, Bob, or not to put you on the spot?
Bob:
Well, I had one and I’m not sure how much time do we have left there.
Jenny:
Well, I realized we started late, maybe we’ve got a few more minutes. Sorry, I just didn’t want to cut short.
Bob:
Yeah, I’m looking at the timer. We’ve got about seven minutes left.
Jenny:
Yeah, let’s [go] with one more.
Bob:
In terms of Fish Creek, which has been very lucky, at least in the downstream reaches to have a park surrounding it, but people are living upstream. What are the challenges you see on a small tributary like that in terms of managing the land in particular the way we use the land that then affects the river or the stream?
David:
Well, Bob, the Fish Creek starts up in McLean Creek, Kananaskis country, and there’s clear cut logging going on up there. There is seasonal grazing of animals. There is off-road vehicles running through the creek often without being regulated. They’re supposed to follow certain trails and use bridges. That’s not being well monitored unfortunately. But indeed, further downstream, we have 2200 people now outside the city in acreages depending on the groundwater and the surface water between Calgary and Kananaskis, agricultural operations, a 36 hole golf course. All of these have obvious impacts and potential risks and affecting both quantity of water, which has significantly diminished over the last four years, particularly with the climate impact. It appears and it’s a real concern that with diminishing quantity and diminishing fish wellbeing there, we’ve done our fish survey in the last two months that is still to be recorded, but it’s very evident that the numbers and the species have declined significantly, especially the native species and all of this to say that like most places on the planet, if you’re not careful and you allow unfettered development and extraction and activities on the landscape, you can predict a decline in quality, quantity and species, which we’re trying to educate both the public and the government on at the present time.
Bob:
Right. Well, and we have really a really good idea of what’s happening to the main stem rivers, but the tributaries where people actually see the impacts first and the impacts more directly. We don’t know as much about those tributaries and Fish Creek is one of those examples where thanks to you folks, you were at least trying to get some decent information there.
David:
That’s right. Yeah. We’re learning a lot as citizen scientists and I monitor some of the chemistry in the water every two weeks with a kit that’s created by a group called Creek Watch or River Watch in Alberta. There are many lay people across the province that are testing the water every couple of weeks and identifying if there are changes, significant changes in the common parameters like oxygen level, pH temperature, which are critical for fish habitat.
Key Takeaways
Jenny (00:57:04):
Right. Thank you. Okay, I’m going to offer some of my key takeaways and let us all offer some final thoughts on anything that we wanted to add or that we feel is important. The first thing is we’ve got monitoring in place. We’re doing reporting. We have some conservation objectives. They’re not being met, compliance is not in place and there isn’t a cost to potentially continuing going in the wrong direction here. Those are the key things that I took away. We’re not looking at the maintenance of watershed integrity, we’re not being proactive enough and that we’re not looking at these non-point source issues closely enough as well, that there’s a lot of things we’re not seeing on, as David just said, and Bob, that those tributaries, for example, are the ones that potentially are seeing those higher concentrations of issues that are not necessarily being seen, and then they also experience climate change more severely and urgently, we’re not fully seeing that picture as well. Those were my key takeaways. Maybe I’ll go to you, Jason next to see if you have any things that you wanted to add or anything you wanted to say that we didn’t touch on, please.
Jason:
Well, I think one of the key challenges we have is we have a pretty substantive regulatory system, but I think we’ve had this discussion around water availability and water supply, and yet we still don’t really engage communities and a broader discussion with Albertans around what their expectations are around their rivers and lakes and streams, because I think that’s the only way we’ll prioritize these things is we have a true understanding and a true engagement with communities. I think inherently we all probably tend towards saying, yes, of course we want healthy rivers, healthy lakes, and yet it’s not prioritized. It’s easy to look at the engineered responses to these things of supply and vulnerability, and really what we need to be having the dialogue is how are we going to prioritize these things as a society and move these things forward? Because I think that’s the only way we can actually get past some of these challenges, which are complex and have trade-offs and all these things, but I think that’s the dialogue that we need to start now because the more, the worse it’s going to get or the harder it’s going to get.
Jenny:
Yeah, good to bring that up. Thank you. The overarching problem is that we’re not properly engaging people in this work, in this knowledge, and then it would become a priority like you’re saying, and people would be very concerned about interbasin transfers, for example. Okay. Bob, how about you? Did you want to offer some thoughts quickly and then we’ll let David wrap us up?
Bob:
Why don’t we go straight to David summarizing?
Jenny:
Okay, thank you. David, did you want to offer some final takeaways?
David:
Well, what an excellent discussion we’ve had. I appreciate what you’re doing, Jenny and Bob and Jason. I really appreciate your comments. I guess from a more political point of view, I recognize that public education is absolutely essential to get political change and policy change that would result in better monitoring and analysis and enforcement. If people understand more about what we’ve talked about today, which thanks to your podcast, some will, they will be more intentional about connecting with their member of the legislature in this case because this is primarily a provincial issue and that’s incumbent upon both those of us who are involved in NGOs and those involved in the scientific community university, for example, to pay more attention to educating the public on the quality and quantity issues and the impacts coming of climate change and the need to be ever more careful about land use and protecting and conserving water because absolutely, there are examples in the states, for example, and around the world where the failure to plan ahead and protect these vital sources has resulted in tremendous conflicts and even wars. And it’s, as I’ve said in some of the literature, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting, and we have to take some of that historic wisdom to heart.
Jenny:
Thank you, David. That’s brilliant. I am going to be very specific for you and your example about speaking to your MLA. I am doing one step further right now and actually trying to hold my MLA accountable for these massive decisions that are misleading us, specifically in my case, the misinformation around fossil fuel pollution and how that impacts water and everything else is one of the main reasons why I’m doing a recall campaign in my constituency to hold my MLA accountable. This is the real life concerns that we are facing and the ways the tools that we have available to us to address ‘em. Like you said, I’m hoping these conversations will help people also understand why somebody like me would be doing this. You talked to David about scientists in taking these samples, and I picture the people that are going through with ATVs and probably not even understanding what’s going on there and the importance and the value of staying on those paths, for example, and not going off course. Okay, that’s a lot. Thank you so much everyone for your participation. Please remember to and subscribe to The Gravity Well help this message get out, help make Jason and David’s time and Bob’s for that matter worthwhile. I really appreciate you guys being here. Take care for now.
Bob:
Thank you. Thanks all. Thank you. Great discussion.
