Water News
Alberta Water News is a free, subscription-based service that provides the latest information on water news across Alberta and upcoming events.
The news is distributed weekly on Mondays via a collated email and Monday to Friday via WaterPortal social media (X was Twitter). Please note that news will not be distributed on Holiday Mondays and will be released the following Tuesday.
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Whitecourt declares state of local emergency due to flooding, issues evacuation orders
CTV News
The Town of Whitecourt, approximately 180 km northwest of Edmonton, has declared a state of local emergency due to flooding. A flood watch is also in effect for the McLeod and Athabasca rivers. Click here to continue reading
How the 2013 floods left a lasting impact and sparked a legacy
City of Calgary
Ten years ago on a grey and gloomy Thursday morning, racing rivers upstream of Calgary, angry and swollen from days of torrential downpour carving away at melting snowpack, sped towards Calgary. It was the largest recorded flood in our city since 1897. The impact resulted in more than 80,000 people being evacuated from 26 communities; the closure of LRT stations, bridges and turning the power off to a number communities and businesses. Click here to continue reading
Edson, Yellowhead County struggle with flooding after wildfire: ‘One extreme to the next’
Global News
The town of Edson continued to face localized flooding Tuesday after heavy rainfall across west-central Alberta Sunday and Monday. More than 105 millimetres of rain fell in Edson in the span of just 48 hours — more than the region would typically see for the entire month of June. Click here to continue reading
Compare and Contrast: South African taps run dry after power shortages
BBC
The peace of a normally tranquil suburban road near South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, is being shattered by the sound of drilling. These are not prospectors looking for a new source of the country’s mineral wealth, but workers digging for an arguably more precious resource: water. Private boreholes – like this one being excavated in Garsfontein – are springing up across the wealthier neighbourhoods in the country’s economic heartland, where taps have been running dry. Click here to continue reading
Are You Ready for ‘Extreme’ Water Recycling?
WIRED
In downtown San Francisco, in a cavernous garage that was once a Honda dealership, a gleaming white-and-blue appliance about the size of a commercial refrigerator is being prepared for transport to a hotel in Los Angeles. There, this unit, called a OneWater System, will be installed in the basement, where its collection of pipes will take in much of the hotel’s gray water—from sinks, showers, and laundry. The system will clean the water with membrane filtration, ultraviolet light, and chlorine, and then send it back upstairs to be used again for nonpotable uses. Click here to continue reading
As Projects Decline, the Era of Building Big Dams Draws to a Close
Yale Environment 360
The end of the big dam era is approaching. Numerous recently published reports reflect this planet-altering fact. One study, conducted by scholars at the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, found that construction of large dams globally fell from a late-1970s peak of about 1,500 a year to around 50 a year in 2020. “There will not be another ‘dam revolution’ to match the scale of the high-intensity dam construction experienced in the early to middle 20th century,” the 2021 study concluded. Click here to continue reading
Walls along River Nile reveal ancient form of hydraulic engineering
Phys Org
An international team of researchers who discovered a vast network of stone walls along the River Nile in Egypt and Sudan say these massive “river groins” reveal an exceptionally long-lived form of hydraulic engineering in the Nile Valley, and shed light on connections between ancient Nubia and Egypt. Click here to continue reading
‘Drought is on the verge of becoming the next pandemic’
The Guardian
Freshwater shortages, once considered a local issue, are increasingly a global risk. In every annual risk report since 2012, the World Economic Forum has included water crisis as one of the top-five risks to the global economy. Half of the global population – almost 4 billion people – live in areas with severe water scarcity for at least one month of the year, while half a billion people face severe water scarcity all year round. Click here to continue reading
Recent rain may not be enough to halt the shrinking of Canada’s cattle herd
CTV News
Anxious Alberta ranchers praying for rain got their wish this week, but it may not be enough to stop the ongoing decline in Canadian cattle production. The moisture that fell on parts of drought-parched Alberta came as a welcome reprieve to the hundreds of cattle farmers who have seen their pastures wither and their water supplies dry up this June. Click here to continue reading
No problems on Red Deer River from recent rain
Red Deer Advocate
Red Deer River is flowing at a faster rate through the city after this week’s rain, but hasn’t risen to a level of concern for city officials. The flow on the Red Deer River was at about 54 cubic metres per second on Friday morning compared to 25 cubic metres per second at 9 p.m. on Thursday, according to river basin data available online from Alberta Environment and Parks at rivers.alberta.ca. Click here to continue reading