ENVIRONMENT
PEGG Article – NOVEMBER 2008
ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE SERIES
Keeping it Clean
Users and government are looking at ways to maintain the quality of Alberta’s water
BY BILL CORBETT
Freelance Writer
Water issues in Alberta tend to focus on the quantity of water available for a variety of users, particularly in the crowded south and oilsands-fuelled north. But as the province’s population and economy continue to rapidly expand, the quality of the supply draws increasing attention.
Certainly, the publicity surrounding the E. coli tragedy of 2000 in Walkerton, Ont., has increased public scrutiny of safe drinking water supplies in Canada. Concerns also continue to arise about the possibility of health effects in communities downstream of oilsands and other industrial developments along the Athabasca River.
While the overall quality of Alberta’s rivers, streams, lakes, wetlands and groundwaters is still so good it’s enviable, the provincial government and most major water users realize they can’t continue to take that quality for granted. In recent years, provincial and federal regulations have been tightened to better protect water quality. As well, Alberta’s Water for Life strategy has taken a proactive approach to addressing long-term water issues, acknowledging that rapid industrial, agricultural and municipal growth could affect the quality of surface and ground waters.
That strategy, in part, responds to the reality that Alberta is the first province in Canada to face potential water shortages. These shortages are most pressing in the province’s south, where much of the heavily allocated South Saskatchewan River Basin is now closed to new water licences.
Reduced flows in rivers and streams can affect water quality and downstream ecosystems by increasing concentrations of contaminants from urban, industrial and agricultural discharges and runoff. Diminished seasonal flows downstream of dams can, if not properly managed, also affect the spring seeding of cottonwood trees, which provide important wildlife habitat in the south.
From an industrial perspective, much public attention about water use falls on the petroleum sector. But Bruce Peachey, P.Eng., president of Edmonton’s New Paradigm Engineering Ltd., says Alberta’s upstream oil and gas industry doesn’t consume huge quantities of water. As well, it has had much less impact on the quality of surface and ground waters than is commonly believed.
Some old, abandoned oil and gas sites have leaked hydrocarbon contaminants into groundwaters and wetlands. However, the industry has embarked on research projects to help clean up the sites and mitigate their effects.
The rapid expansion of coalbed methane development in Alberta has also led to questions about water quality, particularly from nearby landowners with water wells. In 2006, Alberta Environment introduced new industry regulations, including a requirement that companies test water wells close to their coalbed methane drilling.
Data Needed
The even faster growth of oilsands development has prompted concerns that discharges and leaks into the Athabasca River could impact the health of people and aquatic ecosystems downstream of Fort McMurray. One problem with assessing these concerns is the lack of historic data to measure against current and future water quality.
“In the north, the issue is about measuring, understanding and establishing baselines about water quantity and quality,” says Kim Sturgess, P.Eng., CEO of Alberta WaterSMART and a former APEGGA councillor. “Right now, a lot of the debate is based on feelings, not facts.”
Alberta WaterSMART is a not-for-profit society dedicated to the improvement of water management awareness, technologies and practices in Alberta. The society is currently developing a portal for accessing and sharing water data in the province. “It’s really important that this information be collected and shared,” says Ms. Sturgess.
The recent deaths of 500 ducks on a Syncrude tailings pond shone an international spotlight on water quality issues in the oilsands, even though the deaths weren’t directly related to the Athabasca River. What are potentially bigger concerns for the Athabasca watershed, says Mr. Peachey, include long-term seepage from tailings pond walls or a rare but huge rainstorm that, in a worst-case scenario, washes concentrated minerals and hydrocarbons over or through the walls.
“People are monitoring those ponds every day right now,” says Mr. Peachey. “What happens after mining is finished and tailings ponds are turned into end-pit lakes? Who is going to be monitoring them in the next 100 to 200 years?” One engineering solution, he says, is to further develop dry tailings technologies, allowing a smaller volume of waterless tailings to be safely stored in mined areas below the river’s level.
A Thermal Solution
Coal-fired electricity plants are another concern, given that they’re the second-largest water user in Alberta. Much of their water is used to dump heat from the power generation process. The water that’s discharged tends to be warmer and more concentrated in salts, minerals and other contaminants than it was going in, with the downstream impacts on aquatic ecosystems increasing if river flows are low.
One solution here, says Mr. Peachey, is new thermal power technologies. Gasification, for example, promises to reduce both water use and greenhouse gas emissions by about 30 per cent.
Thermal power plants also have holding ponds, such as ash lagoons, where there’s the threat of breaches in dyke walls. In fact one at TransAlta’s Keephills plant west of Edmonton was announced in July. There’s always a chance such breaches will affect nearby groundwaters.
Irrigated agriculture is by far Alberta’s largest water consumer, accounting for 71 per cent of consumptive use of water in Southern Alberta. Agricultural water quality issues include salinity as well as runoff — containing fertilizers, pesticides, livestock manure and naturally occurring nutrients — into surface waters and groundwaters, as well as lakes.
These impacts are being addressed through better land-use practices such as no-till farming, which reduces runoff. Methane from manure can be used as a feedstock for anaerobic digesters, which produce renewable, on-site electricity.
In January 2002, the province assumed responsibility for issuing permits for confined feeding operations under the Agricultural Operations Practices Act. The act contains regulations to prevent surface water and groundwater impacts from feedlots.
Stormwater and Irrigation
Irrigation farming can also be on the receiving end of water quality issues. For example, water in the Western Irrigation District’s canals is being increasingly contaminated by stormwater runoff from urban development just northeast of Calgary. The resulting weed and algae growth is affecting irrigation water quality and pumping efficiency.
The district is drafting guidelines that will require all new surrounding developments to properly treat their stormwater if it is to be allowed to drain into district canals.
“The effect of all this stormwater runoff on us can be alarming. We’re at our limits for handling it,” says Jim Webber, P.Eng., general manager of the irrigation district. “What these new guidelines mean is developers will have to spend a little more money on their ability to hold, treat and release on command their stormwater.”
The recent completion of Calgary’s Shepherd Stormwater Diversion Project will redirect some of those flows through a constructed wetland before they enter the Bow River. It’s part of a city stormwater management strategy — which also includes building storage and settlement ponds and meander channels, especially in new subdivisions — to keep the release of sediments, nutrients and more toxic materials at current levels over the next decade, despite the city’s growth.
The city already boasts the best wastewater treatment system in Canada, with state-of-the art technologies such as ultraviolet light disinfection and biological processes for removing phosphorous and nitrogen. The city’s new Pine Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant will add advanced filtration technologies to the system.
“With the city’s growth, pollutant loadings keep going up, and we have to deal with it through plant and stormwater upgrades,” says Paul Fesko, P.Eng., the City of Calgary’s manager of strategic services for water resources. “We’ve made substantial improvements since the 1980s. The water quality index below the city used to be fair. Now it’s good or very good.”
Overall, though, increasing pressures on the Bow from urban and agricultural growth have resulted in deteriorating water quality and higher riparian impacts in the river’s lower reaches. “We’re not meeting the downstream objectives for nutrients and pesticides, especially near the confluence with the Oldman River,” says Bill Berzins, P.Eng., chair of the Bow River Basin Council, which is overseeing the development of a watershed management plan for the basin.
“In particular, the depth and quality of monitoring data available are pretty sparse, considering how important the resource is to us and the tough tradeoffs that will need to be made. That is why the Bow council launched ambitious water quality objectives earlier this year and is now developing new tools for reporting on the state of the watershed.”
The Drinking Water Challenge
In Alberta’s many small communities, the most pressing concern is the quality of drinking water, which comes from both surface and ground water supplies. Indeed, a 2004 study found that many of the province’s 534 municipal water treatment systems had functional concerns such as an inability to consistently meet more stringent water quality standards for turbidity and disinfection.
Many of these concerns were tied to budget constraints for upgrading the municipalities’ aging treatment facilities, and for retaining and training staff. Alberta Environment has since committed several hundred million dollars to address these issues, including an aggressive program to connect small facilities to regional water treatment systems.
“We’re seeing more and more regionalization, which will help improve the quality of drinking water and of disposal,” says Ms. Sturgess. “From an engineering point of view, it’s providing wonderful challenges in terms of new approaches and new technologies.”
A recurring theme in Alberta’s water quality is the lack of good, integrated monitoring information, whether it’s small town drinking water supplies or the ecological health of aquatic ecosystems. As noted by an international panel commissioned to respond to Alberta’s Water for Life strategy, relatively little monitoring information is available on the quantity and quality of Alberta’s groundwater supplies, which likely exceed those of surface waters.
While groundwater currently accounts for only 2.5 per cent of the province’s water consumption — which includes the water collected from some half million domestic wells — demand on these supplies from all users is expected to increase rapidly, especially in Southern and Central Alberta.
“There’s a huge gap in our knowledge of groundwater,” says Ms. Sturgess. “It wasn’t really necessary before because of our abundance of surface water. But now that there are shortages, the Alberta Government is putting significant resources into better understanding our groundwater situation.”
More Info
Alberta Water for Life
www.waterforlife.gov.ab.ca
Alberta WaterSMART
www.albertawatersmart.com
&
PEGG Online Archive
The Keyser File
Water, Water Everywhere?
November 2006
www.apegga.org
Bow River Basin Council
www.brbc.ab.ca