Plenty on tap for World Water Week

Local celebrations of World Water Week kick off Thursday in Medicine Hat at the Market at Medalta starting at 7:30 p.m. This will be followed next Tuesday through Saturday with daily activities and events for the whole family which focus on the issue of water conservation and the importance of protecting the local watershed.

Highlights of the week will include World Water Day itself (March 22), when there will be various displays at the Medicine Hat Public Library, including a 20-litre bottle lift to draw attention to how women in many countries must walk up to 6 km a day to bring home this quantity of water home from the nearest source. Also on that day the library will be hosting its “World Water Day Splash Challenge” for kids.

The week will cap off March 24-25 with an art show at the One on One Gallery at the Cultural Centre and a panel discussion on water.

The main organizing body for World Water week celebration this year is the newly formed Medicine Hat Chapter of the Council of Canadians (COC). COC chair David Condon says his organization will be working with SEAWA, the city, the Grasslands Naturalists and the library to draw attention to the issue of water wastage.

“The reason World Water Day was started was to raise awareness and make people think about their relationship to water, and the fact that we take so much for granted while other people either have no access to clean water, or they have to walk long distances to get it,” explains Condon.

Condon says another theme will be the issue of corporate bottling of water.

“You have large transnational corporations like Nestle, who buy a lot of water very cheaply, bottle it and sell it back to us. We want people to think about that, and maybe look a little more closely at their own relationship to water ... We also want to talk to people about the importance of the public water utility we have here in Medicine Hat, and how good our water is.”

For more information on all the World Water Week events taking place in the city see the Medicine Hat Chapter of Council of Canadians Facebook page.