Alberta’s new minister of environment and water, Diana McQueen, said her department will be taking a careful look at water allocation, wetlands, groundwater and monitoring.
McQueen, appointed to the ministry on Oct. 12, said the investigation will include a series of public discussions, starting in southern Alberta in 2012.
The talks will help educate Albertans about the competing demands for a finite resource and include things like water storage options, water use and efficiency, transfers and finding better ways to share and conserve water.
“We must find better ways to allocate our water and ensure communities can grow without further impacting the aquatic ecosystem,” said McQueen. “We need to be proactive and gain a better understanding of what our resources are today in order to plan for tomorrow. This will allow us to make better management decisions.”
According to McQueen, one of the biggest challenges Albertans face is water management and the current allocation system, especially in the populous Calgary region, where the resource is even more limited because of the closed basin.
The Bow River Basin has been closed to new licenses since 2006, with much of the existing unused capacity held by the City of Calgary. Other players in the region include the Western and Eastern Irrigation Districts.
Lack of water has become a physical and political problem for municipalities in the region, including Rocky View County, which opted out of the Calgary Regional Partnership in 2009, cutting off its access to water from the Bow River.
Since then the County has been forced to come up with other solutions to meet the growing demand by commercial, industrial and residential developers, including purchasing and piping water from the Graham Reservoir.
Rocky View Reeve Rolly Ashdown said he welcomes the opportunity to have residents share their views in the series of discussions. He added the County is always looking for ways to secure water for the future.
“We always need to be protecting our future, making sure that our water solutions are in place,” said Ashdown. “We just need to make sure that everyone is treated fairly.”
Ashdown said most of the region’s watersheds fall within the County’s borders and the municipality works hard to protect them. However, Rocky View receives little benefit.
“We are stewards of the water everyone uses,” he said. “I have heard it said that there is no water quality problem, there is a water management problem.”
Mark Bennett, executive director of the Bow River Basin Council, said discussions about water allocation in the area are necessary.
“A whole lot may not change but they are looking at it, which is timely,” he said. “Some interests… are disenchanted with the current policy of first in time, first in right.”
Those concerns may be justified, Bennett added, as those looking to develop in the region are tasked with finding new water capacity, but he hasn’t heard any better proposals.
“That is the part of the conversation that I would like to hear,” he said.
Bennett said his organization will be at the table to discuss research into groundwater and a stronger connection between surface and groundwater.
He said the resource should be mapped and measured to see whether area aquifers will support growth and how much potential there is for development.
Dates and locations for the public discussions have not been set.
