Great flood of 2013 leads to federal project
Massive $77.8M research initiative involves 18 Canadian universities
Southern Alberta’s 2013 flood — which claimed five lives and caused billions of dollars in damage — has prompted researchers to launch the largest university-led water project in the world.
On Tuesday morning, the federal government announced the Global Water Futures: Solutions to Water Threats in an Era of Global Climate Change initiative in Saskatoon.
It will be funded with a $77.8-million grant to the University of Saskatchewan, in partnership with Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Waterloo and McMaster University.
The seven-year program, one of 13 projects funded Tuesday through a $900-million investment from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, will grow to $143.7 million with additional money from other universities and industry partners.
“It’s the largest grant to the University of Saskatchewan in its history,” said renowned U of S hydrologist John Pomeroy, who is associate director of the new program. “It’s also the largest university-led water project in the world and the largest grant to any university for water research in the world.”
The project will position Canada “as a global hub for leading-edge, user-driven water science for the world’s cold regions,” Ralph Goodale, minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, said in a news release.
It will develop ways of forecasting and mitigating water-related threats such as floods, droughts and degraded water quality at First Nations communities in Canada.
“A number of the issues are inspired by events that occurred in the Calgary area — the flood of 2013,” said Pomeroy, who has been studying the flood since it hit. “It was very distressing to see everything that happened with that flood.”
In 2013, the flooding caused about 100,000 people to be evacuated from across southern Alberta.
It washed out dozens of bridges and culverts, destroyed more than 1,000 kilometres of highways and left communities in total disarray, resulting in a $6-billion repair bill.
The flooding was declared the largest natural disaster in Canadian history.
Pomeroy said they will use science to provide solutions that could make future flooding less destructive. The Saskatchewanled research network will include a total of 388 researchers at 18 universities, including Calgary and Alberta, 19 federal and provincial agencies, seven Indigenous communities and 45 international research institutes.
It will result in unprecedented computer modelling across the country in all of the major watersheds — including the Bow River and its entire South Saskatchewan River basin, the Columbia River basin on the British Columbia side of the Rockies and in the Great Lakes.
Pomeroy said the work is increasingly important as the number of extreme weather events grow.
“Climate warming and associated severe weather have coupled with unprecedented growth in population and industry across Canada,” he said. “We once had our water plentiful, unlimited and safe, and taken for granted.
“Now we are experiencing water problems we have never dealt with before, so we want to become the most advanced in the world at dealing with these water problems and assuring a high quality water supply.”
In addition to science, the project will also include work on cross-boundary water supply, jurisdictional issues, equity issues and health issues — in particular the condition of drinking water on many First Nations communities.