sustainability
Clockwise from top: UofC Professor Leland
Jackson with children Paige and Grant; Dawn
Heffernan, Environment and Sustainability
Co-ordinator for the Town of Okotoks; Mark
Bennett, Executive Director of the Bow River
Basin Council. Photos by Don Molyneaux.
around 270 litres per day per person for water use,
according to Heffernan.
The basic recipe for success goes something like
this: “the less water used per person, the greater the
population a river can carry.” But this equation only
adds up when there is adequate water supply in the
river to begin with.
Citizens for Sustainable Okotoks (CFSO)
spokesperson, Janifer Calvez, suggests that people
need to be thoughtful of the region’s bigger picture and
consider how water supplies for their children could be
at risk. “Arid and semi-arid locations are vulnerable to
drought, and we’re told that southern Alberta will not
be an exception,” says Calvez.
CFSO also believes that accessing groundwater
to add to the community’s water supply is not a
credible option, as groundwater is an exhaustible and
unsustainable source that is also affected by drought.
“We would encourage the Government of Alberta to
perform studies to
find out how much
aquifer ground
water Alberta has
in every region.
Canadian scientists
have asked for the
funds to do so, but
have never received
them.”
Now that the
province doesn’t
have any more
water licences to
give out, Mark Bennett, Executive Director for the Bow
River Basin Council, is concerned that people will start
to look at groundwater supplies, a subject he believes
needs much more study before extraction policies can
be developed.
Although Okotoks is already using its existing water
licences to capacity, and the Town is actively seeking
water transfers from other licensees that have water
to spare, Quail notes that Okotoks is trying to show
leadership by managing its needs in harmony with
nature and with future generations in mind, not just
future balance sheets.
Okotokians currently live within their water limits
by employing various strategies, including user-pay
water and sewer billing systems, eco-scaping, annual
water conservation summer education programs,
the creation of storm water ponds to filter storm
water before entering the river, a bylaw that requires
low-flow plumbing fixtures (including a ban on
garburetors) in new construction, and much more. The
Town of Okotoks has also embraced new technologies,
such as ultraviolet (UV) disinfection, at its water and
wastewater treatment plants to ensure water quality
at the tap and at the river.
As far as Bennett is concerned, you can’t separate
water quantity from water quality. “There’s no point
in having tons of poor quality water, or good quality
water and little of it,” he says.
Dr. Leland Jackson, a professor of aquatic community
and ecosystem ecology at the University of Calgary, is
also more worried about water quality than quantity.
Jackson explains that the Sheep River starts as
snow melt and precipitation in the mountains of
Alberta’s rugged Kananaskis Country. As the river
The basic recipe for success:
“the less water used per person,
the greater the population a
river can carry.”
