Fresh water isn’t as abundant nor as pristine as we’d like to think it is
WADING THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS of documents related to water quality in Elmira, you’d be hard pressed to say there’s a shortage of data. Critics, however, would argue there’s a real dearth of the relevant kind, especially straightforward information about the health of both the aquifers and the Canagagigue Creek.
This subsection of the Grand River watershed has been well studied – the relative inaction on the file is another matter – unlike much of the freshwater sources in the country, however.
Canada is home to some 20 per cent of the planet’s freshwater, but we know relatively little of the growing perils to the resources, according to a new study by the World Wildlife Federation.
The study found significant disturbances from hydropower dams, agricultural runoff, pulp and paper processing, fragmentation, urbanization, pipeline incidents, oil and gas development and other activities. At the same time, a shortage of data relevant to health indicators limits our understanding of the impact of these human activities on watersheds.
Having spent four years looking into the issue, WWF-Canada found there’s a deficient amount of information for about two-thirds of the country’s watersheds and their respective sub-watersheds.
In this area – the north Lake Erie watershed, including the Grand River system – the available information and overall condition is fair, but the risks are fairly high, notes Liz Hendriks, WWF-Canada’s vice-president of freshwater conservation.
“The stressors are very high in that watershed. Habitat loss is high. Pollution.”
That’s true of pretty much all of southwestern Ontario given the population and its impacts on the environment.
“What we do on land impacts the water in our immediate area and what goes on downstream,” she says, noting our perception of water resources is often at odds with reality. “We have this myth of abundance, and of pristine lakes and rivers.”
In fact, freshwater shortages and water quality are already at issue in the region. While the overabundance of rainfall this spring has tempered calls for increased conservation, one brief drought will bring the warnings to the fore. Even away from Elmira’s contaminated groundwater, there are concerns about the water coming out of our taps, largely due to taste and mineral content. Officials stress the water is safe, eschewing bottled water, but what comes out of the tap isn’t prime drinking material.
Despite a looming global crisis, however, chances are few of us think of shortages as we take showers, flush toilets and run washing machines. Water is plentiful: we just turn on the taps, and out it comes.
Of course, given the ever-escalating cost of that water, we are more mindful of it. The higher cost is supposed to encourage us to conserve, the best way to make the most of our dwindling water supply. I say dwindling, but that’s not really the case. The planet is home to plenty of water, we’re just using it far more quickly than nature can replenish it in the quantities and locations we need.
A glance at photos of the Earth taken from space makes the idea of a water shortage seem absurd. The globe is mostly water. However, 97 per cent of that is salt water. Of the remaining three per cent that is fresh water – the kind we need to drink and to grow food – more than two-thirds is contained in glaciers and icecaps. About 30 per cent is groundwater – the kind we depend on here in Waterloo Region – and only 0.3 per cent is available as surface water (lakes and rivers, for instance).
In many of the areas currently experiencing water shortages – much of Africa comes to mind – the problem is access to freshwater supplies, which at times has more to do with politics and/or economics than it does Mother Nature.
Still, with a growing number of people drawing on freshwater supplies, it’s no surprise we’re running into trouble. That goes double when, as is the case in much of the developing world, the bulk of the growth comes in regions already experiencing shortages. Population shifts on this continent – growth in water-starved California and the U.S. southwest – also contribute to the problem.
Closer to home, growth edges us ever-nearer to a Great Lakes pipeline in the not-too-distant future, as our groundwater supplies are almost maxed out.
Fact is, we do take drinking water for granted. We are lucky in this area, as we have options for mitigating some of the negative impacts of growth. And we’re also less prone to the extremes in weather – floods, droughts, unusual snowfalls – currently on display around the globe.
While we’re still a long way from the worst-case scenarios, we’ll have to move now to mitigate the impacts, or bear the full and much larger costs later when we’re in an emergency situation.
That means taking steps to combat climate change, and precautions in those places likely to be hardest hit – rising water levels, droughts and floods will wreak havoc where they occur.
More information is needed to assess the health of the country’s freshwater and the ongoing threats, the WWF report notes. Specifically, we need to know more about the human activities that are disturbing sub-watersheds and the impact those stressors are having on freshwater health. The list includes pollution, habitat loss, fragmentation, water use, invasive species, alterations to water flow and climate change.
“With these health and threat assessments, we were able to learn that across the country we are putting significant stress on our watersheds – whether through pollution, lowered water flows, overuse,
habitat loss or fragmentation, invasive species or climate change. But because the corresponding data on health metrics isn’t being collected for a majority of watersheds, no one can conclusively say to what extent these disturbances are harming the health of this crucial resource. That’s a shocking oversight that we can’t afford to ignore,” says Hendriks of the report’s findings, which she’d like to see serve as something of a wakeup call to the public and politicians.
Canadians routinely say water is our most valuable resource, but we don’t walk the talk when it comes to taking steps such as conservation and being mindful of what we send down our sinks, for instance.
On an individual basis, how each of us behaves isn’t the issue, but taken as a whole, well, that’s where things starting going downhill, she notes.
“Cumulatively, we’ve built up activities that have a detrimental impact on our ecosystem,” says Hendriks, noting that changing course could take some time.
“We do move slowly because we haven’t been paying attention to our freshwater resources.”