Do we protect our drinking water or cater to industry and ATVs?

North Saskatchewan’s headwaters crucial to future supply, Stephen Legault writes

As the City of Edmonton wraps up hosting duties for the Cities and Climate Change Science Conference, this is the perfect time to reflect on how what happens in the mountains to our west impacts the water we depend on as a city and province.

Nearly 90 per cent of the North Saskatchewan River’s water comes from the mountains and foothills of the Bighorn Wildland more than 200 kilometres upstream. They’re our headwaters. How we manage these areas will dramatically impact our future water quality and quantity, not just for Edmonton, but in many other Alberta communities.

In a March 5 Edmonton Journal article, “We’re going to be drier in the future,” Chandra Tomaras, City of Edmonton senior environmental project manager, says, “I can’t speak to future flows but historically … there have been episodes of zero flow in past centuries.” She notes Edmonton’s reliance upon the North Saskatchewan River flows as the city’s sole source of drinking water.

The reality is, our headwaters are vulnerable, but we can do something now. Management of these areas is something that every single Albertan should be involved in. Historically set aside during the transition from federal management to provincial oversight as a forest reserve to protect these headwaters, conservation values have slowly given way to industrial development and motorized recreation.

Planning for climate change, including more variable water levels in the North Saskatchewan, means protecting the Bighorn as a wildland provincial park is more important than ever. According to a 2017 summary of existing research published by John Weaver of the Wildlife Conservation Society of Canada, under a “businessas-usual scenario, all lands east of the Forestry Trunk Road may warm by two to four degrees” this century. Areas west of the Forestry Trunk Road will warm by 1.5 to 2.5 degrees over the same period.

The capital region’s concerns that its sole source of drinking water is at risk is real. As Tomaras notes, cities are particularly vulnerable to climate-change. Edmonton has been fortunate so far, but by 2050, the mountain snow season is projected to be shorter and the snowpack will continue to decline by an additional 10 to 40 per cent. Paired with increasing demand for water, conserving this dwindling supply of water will become even more pressing, Weaver’s report states.

Despite being the subject of intense debate over future metallurgical coal mines, expanding off-highway vehicle trails, oil and gas development and large-scale clear-cut logging, the Bighorn region is one of the province’s best bets to protect our water supply. All of these activities compound the impact climate change has on our headwaters, making it harder for the landscape to be the natural sponge it needs to be, holding onto or releasing water as needed, while it is filtering that water.

Logging and prescribed burns have the potential to enhance watershed health by more closely mimicking natural disturbance, but regulations and industry need to modernize. Discussions with users of the region need to include quiet recreation and regulated motorized recreation to diminish impacts on creeks and wetlands.

Alberta has made tough decisions about our province’s direction on climate change. Those decisions haven’t been popular with the petroleum sector and the coal industry. They have been criticized as too weak by some environmentalists.

Preventing dangerous changes to our drinking-water source due to global warming will require us to consider all Albertans’ needs when discussing the future of the Bighorn. Reducing the stresses many industrial and motorized recreational activities present is the best way to give nature a chance to adapt.

Now, another difficult decision rises. Do we protect our headwaters in places like the Bighorn so they help sustain the water we need for cities like Edmonton and Red Deer?

Or do we capitulate to the logging, mining and petroleum industries and motorized recreationalists and forgo our longterm water security?