Alberta Running on Empty

Alberta, or at least the southern part of the province, is looking at a future of water insecurity. Climate change and the retreat of glaciers are the main culprits.


Canada's Prairie provinces could be particularly hard hit, experts say, due to the fact they are among the highest industrial and commercial users of water in the country, partly because of the agricultural sector.

In dry southern Alberta, the agricultural sector relies on irrigation — the process of watering crops artificially instead of relying on rainfall.

"We're already in the climate catastrophe era," said James Byrne, a geography professor at the University of Lethbridge who has studied climate change for more than 30 years.

The use of water in the southern part of Alberta is restricted. New licences for water can't be issued; they must be purchased from existing licence holders.

But even the current allocation of water licences in southern Alberta could come under stress due to extreme weather variability, said University of Lethbridge geography professor Stefan Kienzle.  

"We have allocated 100 per cent of our water. We cannot allocate any more," Kienzle said. "The biggest threat facing southern Alberta is multi-year droughts … maybe the [irrigators] can get away with scraping by two years.

"But if you have a drought that is longer than two years, you are done. Irrigation is done. The productivity is done. We will all scramble for water as municipalities and industries to keep our faucets going."

A study out of the University of British Columbia released last year found that one in four Alberta households face water shortages.

The mining industry in the South Saskatchewan Basin is fighting back against provincial and federal refusals to approve new coal projects, largely because of the water shortage. One producer, Benga Mining, is appealing these decisions.*

But in southern Alberta and elsewhere across the province, it's the combined weight of human activity that is taxing an already limited water supply, said Katie Morrison, conservation director with the southern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS).

Heavy forestry, motorized recreation and industrial use are having a big impact on the resource, Morrison said.


* Benga is operated by Riversdale Resources. Its chief executive, Tad Watroba, is said to be the close aide to Gina Reinhart, Australia's controversial Queen of Coal.










Comments

  1. TrailblazerOctober 21, 2021 at 6:27 PM

    Water water everywhere and not drop to drink.
    Intelligence and knowledge is also in short supply.
    The lust for wealth however soldiers on without resistance.

    TB






    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibOctober 24, 2021 at 10:12 AM

      Excuse the vulgarity but we have to unfuck our minds and hit that reset button, TB.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Up in Smoke. 300 Sq. Mi. of Amazon Rainforest Lost Every Day.

Image
  The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at what should be an alarming rate. 312 sq. mi. or 808 sq. kms. every day. Over the past 30 years humans have destroyed a patch of the Amazon equal in area to the states of Texas and New Mexico . The Amazon – historically a great carbon absorber, since trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen – now releases more carbon than it stores, which adds to, rather helps to reduce, our global climate crisis. Deforestation rates decreased slightly from 2004 to 2012. But since then, they’re back on the rise, especially in the past couple of years, since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil. In 2018, as Bolsonaro campaigned as a patriotic man of the people, scientists predicted that once the Amazon lost more than 25% of its tree cover, it would become a drier ecosystem, all because deforestation changes weather patterns (due to how trees respire), which in turn reduces rainfall. Furthermore, as the forest becomes fragmented, areas surrounded...
Read more

The Cognoscenti Syndrome

  There is a group of people I think of as the Cognoscenti, people who are well educated, very informed and of rapidly diminishing relevance. Their ranks include writers such as Chris Hedges and Glen Greenwald. These are people who have honed an almost Puritanical value system, readily finding fault in any direction. They are scathing in their attacks on Republicans and Democrats alike to the point where they become nihilists. They don't endorse. They prescribe. This is where they fail. They're unable to advocate for anything that might resonate with the public whose interests they argue are being trammeled. Donald Trump was bad but Joe Biden is scarcely better. This is where their elitism comes in.  74 million may have voted for Trump but, hey, they didn't know any better. The mob that stormed the Capitol. They were just victims of the system venting their frustrations. All the racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, white nationalism - inevitable side effects of their oppr...
Read more

Who Asks "Why?"

Every time there's a conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, all we hear is 'why?'  Why, as in, whose fault is this? It's easier to affix blame if you can truncate the event. Pick a convenient start date, something recent. In this case we'll make it either the Israeli eviction of Arabs from Jerusalem or the scuffle that took place outside the mosque in response. If those don't work, let's go for Hamas launching unguided rockets into Israel. That's even better because it tags Hamas with the blame. The nice thing about this approach is you can just keep using it. It goes on and on, just as it has for the past half-century since the '67 war. You can even date this whole mess to the beginning of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Israelis are said to have called these periodic wars, "mowing the lawn." The idea is that, every now and then, you have to take these Arabs to the woodshed. And then you keep your powder dry unt...
Read more