Water worries won’t dry up any time soon

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on March 15, 2018.

The title of a 15-year-old Water for Life campaign from the Province of Alberta should renew a sharp, urgent tone for residents.

Unfortunately many eyes will roll as residents of Medicine Hat deal with plugged storm drains as warm weather melts heaps of accumulated snow fall from the winter.

In the moment its hard to recall an incredibly dry summer and fall in 2017, or easy to brush it off as fact of life on the prairies.

The increasingly apparent fact, though, is that water’s relationship to economic security — not to mention life itself — should be a top-of-mind concern.

This week, researchers at the University of Saskatchewan compared the local river basins in southern Alberta to drought-stricken South Africa, where rationing could be imposed next month for four million people.

Many may call that a stretch, crazy to consider or a scare tactic of so-called radical environmentalists.

But there’s no doubt water availability, as well as flood prevention, are already pressing issues in Western Canada.

As climate change intensifies, hydrologists say, a faster, earlier thaw of the mountain snow pack means less water is available late in summer and fall.

Over time, more people and more growing acres are depleting aquifers once thought inexhaustible.

More intense storms, like the single, three-day event that caused 2013 flood in Medicine Hat and southern Alberta, are predicted to become more common.

Work, or at least planning, is underway.

A current rewriting of the City of Medicine Hat’s long-term development plan considers water supply challenges as a major thrust.

More than $100 million in irrigation and dam improvements have been suggested by communities in the southeast.

A flood mitigation plan in the province’s hands calls for off-stream reservoirs and watershed protections.

Irrigators have spent years and millions on moving towards piping, rather than canals, and promoting conservation for no other fact than it makes good business sense.

For many, only time will tell if climate change is a reality, but it’s not a bet you can afford to lose.

At Cape Town, South Africa, officials say without drastic change soon they will turn off the water system and begin rationing in April.

That’s in a climate quite similar to semi-arid southern Alberta.

How about California, where years of drought threaten a world-class agricultural industry and have forced restrictions in that country’s second largest population centre.

It also fuelled new and furious debate about the state’s water rights regimen, and how could it not?

A similar first-in-time-first-in-line system in Alberta remains the order, though seam-bursting urban development has given rise to a entire industry of swapping and selling water rights.

When Water For Life was announced in 2002 the major concern was the possible commodification of water, which many see as a public resource.

It seems to have happened by degrees over the years without many noticing.

A 10-year-old moratorium on new water licenses has been imposed on the South Saskatchewan River creating a major barrier for industrial or value added food processing.

Many would complain that the rapid development in Calgary is putting a choke on communities downstream. That might be true, but recognizing the problem isn’t in itself a solution.

Good luck convincing that city to stop growing in the interests of fairness.

Right now the City of Medicine Hat has water rights in place to accommodate about 250,000 people, and Cypress County has been quietly buying new water rights for several years.

Such rights are meaningless, however, if there’s no water to draw.

What would happen then?

You’d be crazy not to wonder.