Bill Wahl: Flood Recovery and/or Flood Prevention
The following is an open letter addressed to the citizens of Alberta, from Bill Wahl of Medicine Hat. The letter expresses how Mr. Wahl has been affected by floods, but also points out how water in Alberta is being managed and areas for improvement. Have a read and please continue to share your thoughts with us through Facebook, Twitter or Email. Thanks for sharing, Mr. Wahl!
An open letter to the Citizens of Alberta
Flood Recovery and/or Flood Prevention
My name is Bill Wahl and I am frustrated!!
Like others in Medicine Hat and Southern Alberta we live in proximity of the South Saskatchewan River [have for 40 years] and have been affected by flooding, all-be-it not this year due to the installation of a high tech backflow preventer after the 1995 flood. We are thankful to family and friends who helped us move out of our home and for better preparedness of disaster services.
The main reason for my frustration is that I always thought that the dams on the tributaries of the South Saskatchewan River were there in part to help us out during times of impending floods. The Alberta Government meetings after the ’95 flood reported that flooding was caused by a severe precipitation event that occurred in very close proximity to the Oldman River Dam. That and a combination of technical issues caused by washed out flow sensors, telephone communications and the short time from onset of precipitation to significant increases in inflow did not give dam operators sufficient time to spill water ahead of high water entering the dam. Although dam safety was never an issue, water was released from the dam at a rate no greater then inflow. So what happened this year? According to records obtained from Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, the 2013 peak was ~5590 cm3/s and the 1995 peak was ~4200 cm3/s. The gauging station reports of the 2013 peak was more than 1m higher than 1995. The cross section of the river valley at other locations will affect this value to some extent. Levels in Medicine Hat never reached those predicted with an increase of 50 cm3/s increase in flow rate over 1995 reported. Persons who experienced the 1995 levels commented on water levels about 20 cm higher; all this being enough to cause significantly damage in Medicine Hat. How is it that the dam[s] that impact our flow rate could not have done more to mitigate flood issues this year given the knowledge gained from the ’95 flood, and new technologies for weather forecasting? We have experienced more floods in the past 20 years than the first 20 years of living by the river.
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Keep Them Out Of The Floodways by Don Barnett
The following is a speech given by Don Barnett to the Inland Waters Directorate of Environment Canada in 1976. Don Barnett was mayor of Rapid City, South Dakota during one of the worst floods in South Dakota’s history and at the time of this speech one of the worst floods in U.S. history.
We hope that the speech below will stir some thoughts from you, our readers, on how to mitigate floods in the future in Southern Alberta.
Join Our Discussion: How can Alberta prevent future flooding?
The rain may have stopped, but flooding in Alberta is not over. We’re continuing the conversation on the Alberta WaterPortal and wanting to hear what you think. The below excerpt outlines five actions that were recently developed by leading Canadian water experts, to address future flood mitigation. What are your ideas? Join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter or email us.
Southern Alberta has just experienced the worst flooding disaster in the province’s history. At the Canadian Water Summit, held on June 27, 2013 in Calgary, a group of leading water experts were asked the question: “What can we do to mitigate these flood situations in the future?” These experts put forth five actions that all levels of government should consider today to avoid the impacts of similar flood events in the future.
- Anticipate more extreme weather events and plan for them.
- Improve our operational predictive capacity through better modeling and data management.
- Invest in infrastructure such as on and off stream storage, diversions, and natural storage such as wetlands.
- Consider flood risks in municipal planning, including building in flood plains, and better engineering of electrical, mechanical and back-up systems.
- Manage our water resources collaboratively, following the example of the Bow River Consortium, and ensure proper funding for the watershed planning and advisory councils across the Province.
Above all, leadership is vital. The intention is to have these recommendations reviewed and expanded on by a broad audience, and then presented to all levels of government for their consideration.
The Alberta WaterPortal is the vehicle for collecting input broadly, and for generating the dialogue that will shape these recommendations into significant action plans. Now, it’s your turn. Share your ideas with us through Facebook, Twitter or email us!
How’s the Water?
Republished with permission of the publisher from the April 2013 PEG magazine.You can view original article by clicking here (2.42 MB)
Ten years in, Alberta’s innovation Water for Life strategy has created successful approaches while balancing often competing interests. But will it be enough for the coming decades? Albertans close to the system that links stewards and water councils to province-wide goals weigh in on its successes, its challenges and its shortfalls.
By Bill Corbett
Freelance Writer
Growing up in southeast Alberta, Lorne Taylor, PHD, would tour the family ranch and see cattle dugouts drying up during periods of drought. At such times, Medicine Hat residents on one side of the street could water their gardens one day, those on the other side the next. If Dr. Taylor’s mother mistakenly watered on the wrong day, there came a reminding knock on the door from a neighbour.
“I grew up with an appreciation for the value of water,” he says. So when Dr. Taylor became Alberta’s environment minister in 2001, crafting a long-term strategy for managing and safeguarding the province’s water resources quickly became a priority. But first he wanted input from ranchers, environmentalists and industry officials — “real people, not just academics. I wanted it driven from the community up, not from the government down. If you’re going to do that properly, if you truly want to listen, it takes time.”
Guided by this stakeholder input, the province’s Water for Life strategy was unveiled in 2003. It was, and still is, intended to achieve three main goals, which are
- safe, secure drinking water
- healthy aquatic ecosystems
- reliable, quality water supplies for a sustainable economy.
Dr. Taylor, who retired from elected provincial office in 2004, summarizes the goals this way: they’re about meeting the water needs of people, the environment and the economy.
“Water for Life” was heralded as one of the first strategies of its kind to take a comprehensive, holistic and watershed-based approach to looking at water, to engage citizens and to do all this proactively,” says Andy Ridge, directory of the water policy division of Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development. Most other leaders were in place like Australia or Nevada, with no water. To do this without a water crisis was kind of unique.
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Andy Ridge: Our Water. Our Future. A Conversation with Albertans.
Albertans are passionate about water. From majestic mountain waterfalls to astonishing coulees, Alberta’s diverse landscapes inspire and draw tourists from all over the globe. Citizens, communities, businesses, and the agricultural and energy sectors have been engaged in a discussion about water for over a hundred years. We take water seriously in Alberta and many consider it to be our most important resource. Alberta has a bright economic future and is a great place to live for the more than 3.7 million people that call it home. This is due in no small part to the stewardship and wise management of our water resources.
Alberta has a rich history of water management and water stewardship. In 1931, Alberta passed the Water Resources Act, which declared water to be the property of the province and granted abilities to use the water through a licence. In 1999, Alberta passed the Water Act which includes a Framework for Water Management Planning and a Strategy for the Protection of the Aquatic Environment where the Government of Alberta affirms its commitment to not only maintaining and restoring the natural environment, but enhancing it.
This year, Alberta celebrates the 10 year anniversary of the Water for Life strategy. Noteworthy achievements of Water for Life include the establishment of eleven Watershed Planning and Advisory Councils across Alberta where committed members conduct education and stewardship activities throughout their watersheds and partake in the development of basin water assessment and planning. In addition, under the strategy, all major water using sectors in Alberta have prepared conservation, efficiency and productivity plans that outline actions each sector will take to reduce demand for and conserve water.
Participate in the Alberta Water Conversation
Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development (AESRD) has been running a consultation process with the public (that means you!) on the use of water in Alberta.
AESRD has identified four main topics of interest based on input they have received from various stakeholders leading up the conversation.
Those topics are:
- Healthy lakes;
- Hydraulic Fracturing and Water;
- Drinking Water and Wastewater Systems; and
- Water Management.
A conversation guide (5.8 MB) has been put together by AESRD, summarizing their thoughts on these topics; with an ask for your input on where to go next.
Most of the ways to participate have been wrapped up. However you still can participate by:
- Provide feedback through email by April 19th, and
- Follow and participate in the discussion on AESRD’s blog and Twitter.
Regardless of the feedback you may have, we at the WaterPortal highly recommend that you make your thoughts heard through any one, or more, of the channels listed above.
Stay tuned to our news section for updates on what is happening with water in the province.
Guest Columnist: Nashaat N. Nassar
Nanotechnology could help in reducing the environmental footprints of Alberta oilsands industry
Nanoscrubbers for air emission capture, nanoadsorbents for adsorptive removal of waste and hydrocarbons, and nanocatalysts for catalytic steam gasification of asphaltenes and naphthenic acid for improving oil quality and water recyclability.
The oilsands recovery and upgrading with the current processes are more water and energy intensive; as a result more pollution is created, such as heavier residue, wastewater, solids waste, and air emissions. This has resulted in opportunities for development of new technologies that improve heavy oil recovery, minimize the use of energy and water-based processes and reduce the air emissions with lower cost services. Nanotechnology, which is relatively a new area of science, presents new opportunities for reducing the environmental footprints of oilsands industry. The name nano comes from the size of molecules which is measured in nanometers or one billionth of a meter (1 10-9 meter). Nanoparticles are one of the important examples on nanotechnology applications. Due to their unique properties, nanoparticles can be used to sustain oilsands industry through the development of greener processes with cost-effective approach.
Guest Columnist: Ron Wallace
History And Governance As A Blueprint For Future Federal-Provincial Co-operation On Environmental Monitoring In The Alberta Oil Sands Region
Overview
The environmental impacts associated with existing and proposed developments in the Alberta oil sands development region have received unprecedented national, and international, attention. The oil sands represent a strategic resource of importance to Alberta, Canada and indeed to the international energy trading community. The present and future potential magnitude of developments required to extract, upgrade and transport the oil have, for better or worse, vaulted the oil sands region into the realms of international economic, social, environmental and political attention. Accordingly, both the federal and provincial governments have increasingly focussed their attention to creating or expanding environmental monitoring and research programs in the oil sands region of Alberta.
At a time when new approaches to scientific monitoring programs are being reviewed, it may be useful to recall that there is an extensive, and successful, history of scientific and policy co-ordination between Alberta and Canada in regard to oil sands environmental assessment and management programs in the province. Past Federal-Provincial agreements have recognized the overlapping jurisdictional responsibilities and governments responsibly have sought to achieve management and financial efficiencies to harmonize, if not resolve, these overlaps.
Here, past management models and agreements are reviewed, with particular attention paid to the Alberta Oil Sands Environmental Research Program (AOSERP) (1975 to 1980) and the Northern River Basins Study Board (NRBS) (1991 -1996).
Guest Columnist: Bob Sandford
No Mere Budget Cut
Let us be clear. Unless you believe that contracting a flesh-eating disease is a reasonable way to lose weight, it is difficult to interpret what is presently happening to Environment Canada as a mere budget cut. To accept what we have seen happen to this crucial federal government department as mere fiscal belt-tightening is to fall for a public relations cover-up. Canada’s most important environmental institution is not being trimmed. It is not just going through temporary hard times. It is being hollowed out, gutted, dismembered alive. It is being destroyed.
What is happening to Environment Canada should be of great concern to water managers throughout Canada. Because of warming mean temperatures, the hydrology of every region of the country is on the move. The agency responsible for monitoring these changes on a national scale is being utterly incapacitated.
We are about to lose the baseline against which we measure the meaning of such changes in terms of their effect on our economy and our environment. The water management community in this country would do well not to underestimate the relevance of Environment Canada monitoring and research. Despite huge cuts to the department in the 1990s, Environment Canada researchers still managed to produce two of the most influential assessments of the threats to our country’s water quality and availability to appear to date in this young century. These reports remain the foundation of water management planning throughout Canada. Environment Canada’s capacity to serve this country in this and other ways in the future, however, is now is doubt.
Guest Columnist: Tilly MacRae
What Are You Willing To Pay For Your Water?
The book “The Big Thirst” discusses how we have been in a golden age of water, a period of free and accessible water while the earth’s climate has been warming. Water has been so inexpensive, readily accessible and reliable that to society it has become invisible. This is not to say that we do not appreciate, or misunderstand its importance, it is just that it has become so available that we do not even consider the implications of usage and waste, when we do use it.
The result is that society has created a false economy for water. For sure, there have been some economic accounting for water, often with a fee charged to households and industry. But this only reflects the cost of delivery and purifying the water (not any cost for the raw water itself). The result is a standard economic reference point or price for water that is not sustainable.
This form of socio-economic thinking cannot last. Water is a life critical commodity and a life sustaining fuel. Our water problems relating to shortages, accessibility, purity and availability are imminent, and need to be addressed as part of our social balance.
The issue is, how can we change a consumptive behaviour that is so ingrained in our culture? Historically with all other valuable commodities, society has placed a value or a price on that commodity. The concept could easily be extend to water by charging the population for their water usage, and thus creating an awareness and sensitivity about how everyone’s actions affect water usage.