Storage and recovery project receives $1.3 million from Canada’s Gas Tax Fund (Gov of Canada)

Parksville, British Columbia, December 19, 2011 – The Englishman River Water Service (ERWS), a joint venture between the City of Parksville and the Regional District of Nanaimo, has been awarded more than $1.3 million from Canada’s Gas Tax Fund for an innovative project to store and recover water in an aquifer.

“Our Government has delivered on our commitment to make the Gas Tax Fund a permanent annual investment of $2 billion,” said James Lunney, Member of Parliament for Nanaimo-Alberni, on behalf of the Honourable Denis Lebel, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. “This innovative project will benefit our watershed and ecosystem, and contribute to a sustainable water supply for the Oceanside area.”

Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) is a relatively new technology that is intended to manage peak demands and reduce overall demand on water treatment plants. The project will help excess water from the Englishman River flow through the treatment plant, and into wells. In the summer months, water will be withdrawn from the wells and pumped into the distribution system.

“If the analysis of this project proves successful, we will be able to reduce the future water treatment plant capacity by about one-third,” said Joe Stanhope, Chair of the Englishman River Water Service Management Board. “This technology will also allow the quantity of water taken from the Englishman River during the summer months to be reduced, on average, by 50 per cent. This will assist in maintaining the minimum fisheries flow in the lower reaches of the river, and will provide an important supplemental source of water to meet future need.”

“The federal Gas Tax Fund will allow the Englishman River Water Service to research this innovative ASR technology not only for the residents of our region but also as a first for British Columbia,” said Chris Burger, Mayor of the City of Parksville. “We are excited to be given this opportunity which will allow us to efficiently store drinking water at a lower cost.”

“It’s good to see the Gas Tax Fund supporting such innovative approaches for plans to capture and store drinking water,” said Ida Chong, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development. “The regional district should be commended for future thinking in considering the long-term water needs of area families.”

Canada’s Gas Tax Fund provides stable, long-term infrastructure funding to local governments and other organizations through a tripartite agreement between the federal government, British Columbia and the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM). The fund primarily supports capital projects that lead to cleaner air, cleaner water or reduced greenhouse gas emissions. UBCM administers the Gas Tax Fund in BC in collaboration with Canada and British Columbia. On December 15, 2011, legislation was passed that has made the Gas Tax Fund a permanent annual investment of $2 billion.

“BC communities are developing new ways of managing local water supplies,” said Heath Slee, President of UBCM. “UBCM appreciates the support of the Gas Tax Fund for new design concepts that promise to safeguard our rivers and streams.”

For more information:

Pierre Floréa
Office of the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities
613-991-0700

Jeff Rud
Communications Director
Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development
250-208-4028

Paul Taylor
Relationships and Communications Advisor
UBCM
250-356-2938

Mike Squire
Program Manager
Arrowsmith Water Service
250-951-2480

Infrastructure Canada
613-960-9251
Toll free: 1-877-250-7154

Veolia Water Launches Interactive Web Site Examining Water’s Economic, Environmental and Societal Impact

Press Release Source: Veolia Water On Wednesday May 18, 2011

CHICAGO, May 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Veolia Water today launched GrowingBlue.com, a data-driven resource that is designed to help municipalities, businesses and consumers gain a better understanding of today’s and tomorrow’s global and local water challenges and best practices. Focused on nature’s essential but often forgotten element – water –GrowingBlue.com uses a variety of tools, including animated maps, infographics and case studies, to provide a visually compelling, user-friendly representation of the current state of water in 180 countries. The site also includes possible water availability scenarios in 2050 and the intrinsic link between water and economic prosperity, societal stability and environmental sustainability.

Urban, domestic, industrial and agricultural sectors worldwide are competing for increasingly limited water supplies, and communities are being forced to reconsider the future of their economic and population growth. Currently, 2.5 billion people (36 percent of the world’s population) live in water-stressed regions, while more than 20 percent of the global GDP is already produced in risky, water-scarce areas. According to new data presented on the GrowingBlue.com site, almost half of the world’s economy and 4.8 billion people, roughly half the world’s expected population, could be located in regions facing water limitations by 2050.

GrowingBlue.com consists of three primary sections:

The Growing Blue™ Tool – A one-of-a-kind summary of the current state of water in 180 countries worldwide, as well as an initial focus on 50 U.S. states and major cities, which translates complex data gathered from a number of resources into a series of animated maps and benchmarks. Facts and figures accompanying each map provide analysis and rank the region’s water stress; municipal, agricultural and industrial water use; and condition of the current water delivery infrastructure. The information, including all data in its original spreadsheet format, is packaged into a PDF for water management officials and government leaders to download and use as a resource.

2050 Scenarios – Presents different economic, social and environmental scenarios that communities and companies worldwide could face in 2050 based on the implementation of sustainable water management practices versus “business as usual” approaches.

Implications of Growth – A candid, data-driven assessment of water’s economic, environmental and social impact that includes real-world examples of the costs, trade-offs and potential solutions to a variety of water challenges.

Veolia Water, in collaboration with Global Water Intelligence, was the main underwriter of the site, in consultation with industry colleagues, scientists, academia and non-governmental organizations, such as Clean Water America Alliance and the International Food Policy Research Institute.

NewYorkTimes BookChat: ‘The Big Thirst’: The Future of Water

New York Times Economix, May 3, 2011 by David Leonhardht

Charles Fishman, a longtime writer for Fast Company magazine, is the author of “The Big Thirst,” a new book on water. He previously wrote “The Wal-Mart Effect,” which won The Financial Times’s award for best business book of 2006. Our conversation follows.

Q. You call the last 100 years “the golden age of water,” at least in the developed world. But you also say the golden age is over. As you told Terry Gross, on “Fresh Air,” “We will not, going forward, have water that has all three of those qualities at the same time: unlimited, unthinkingly inexpensive and safe.” Why not?

Mr. Fishman: We’re spoiled. Well-designed, well-engineered water systems were built across the United States and the developed world 100 years ago. They worked so well that they literally helped make creative economically vibrant cities possible, and healthy. And those water systems were so successful they became invisible — and they remain invisible.

We just assume when we turn on the tap, the water will be there, and that the water system buried in the ground is doing fine.

Both assumptions are out of date. Population growth, economic development (which changes dramatically how much water people want and use), and climate change are all putting pressure on water supplies — not just in places like Las Vegas or California, but in Atlanta, in Florida, in Spain, across China.

We are going to have to move from an era of unconscious water abundance to an era of smart water — using water smartly (why do we water the azaleas, or flush our toilets, with purified drinking water?), and also modernizing and updating our creaky water systems. They were advanced technology 100 years ago. Now those systems struggle to keep up with our needs, and struggle for resources.

Free water — water so cheap you never think about cost when making water use decisions — is a silent disaster. When something is free, the message is: It’s unlimited.

Free water leads to constant waste and misallocation. Farmers and factory managers, hotels and gardeners never consider how much water they are using, and whether they are using it smartly — because the water bill itself sends no signal to be careful. (Half the water used by farmers worldwide is wasted.) There’s no incentive for efficiency.

Cheap water also means that the organizations we rely on to supply water — utilities, irrigation districts — never have the money to modernize, to replace crumbling systems, to find the “next gallon” of water supply.

Meanwhile, the poor pay the highest cost of all — hundreds of millions of people spend half of every day walking to fetch water that usually isn’t even clean. That water is “free” in that they don’t pay for it — except in terms of their health, their children’s health and their economic opportunities.

If you could change one thing that would fix almost everything about water — from better environmental stewardship to getting water to people who don’t have it now — it would be price. We can afford a bit more for our remarkable water system. We’ll be in trouble if we let it slide into obsolescence.

Q. I assume charging more for water would not solve the developing world’s problems. Doesn’t the increasing access to clean water require some other policy change? Or am I missing something?

Mr. Fishman: The key point about the pricing of water is this: People will pay for water that is safe, reliable, convenient, and liberates them from being slaves to walking or standing in line.

I visited a very poor neighborhood in Delhi named Rangpuri Pahadi. The 3,500 residents there live on $100 a month.

They got so frustrated standing in line hours a day at neighborhood pumps for water that didn’t even come at a regular time, they created their own miniature water system. They collected money — “capital” from people whose income is $3 a day — drilled wells, used their own labor to lay pipes from a storage tank to each each family’s shack.

Those who want water pay about one day’s wages a month, and the residents are thrilled. Their “upstart utility” gets them better water than the public standpipe, it comes on schedule, it liberates them to have jobs, liberates their kids to go to school. They pay the equivalent, for a U.S. family, of $150 a month for water. And they did it themselves.

Money isn’t the only solution to water — the cost of the Iraq war, alone, is enough to provide water systems for every village, every person, on Earth. The real problem is human — helping people get a water system they understand, can run and sustain themselves, and have confidence in. That’s harder than it sounds. But the problem isn’t technology, or resources, it’s political will and cultural understanding.

Read the rest of the interview

CD Howe: Threats to Groundwater Supplies in Canada Require Coordinated Response

Threats to Groundwater Supplies in Canada Require Coordinated Response: C.D. Howe Institute

TORONTO, Feb. 10 /CNW/

– Better oversight of Canada’s groundwater resources is required in the face of numerous challenges, according to a study released today by the C.D. Howe Institute.

In ” Protecting Groundwater: The Invisible and Vital Resource, ” James Bruce, recently chair of the Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel on Groundwater, assesses present and emerging threats and makes recommendations for better groundwater management in Canada.
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Challenges for groundwater management, the author says, include energy issues, such as the uncertain impact of shale gas “fracking,” slow recharge rates of aquifers, agricultural intensification, and contamination. Canada has yet to experience large-scale over-exploitation of groundwater resources and its groundwater remains of good quality.

Bruce says the time is right, however, for establishing the legal, regulatory and management systems, along with the necessary monitoring provisions, to overcome the threats to groundwater.

Nearly 10 million Canadians, including about 80 percent of the rural population and many small- to medium-sized municipalities, rely on groundwater for their everyday needs. However, Canadians living in large cities and most policymakers tend to ignore groundwater and its management. This asymmetry of interests has resulted in fragmented knowledge of groundwater locations, their quantity, quality, and how groundwater supplies are changing over time in Canada.

Bruce says an effective groundwater management strategy would adhere to five major principles for sustainability. They are: protection from depletion; protection from contamination; ecosystem viability; allocation to maximize groundwater’s contribution to social and economic well-being; and the application of good governance.

Given the challenges that lie ahead, the author concludes, meaningful cooperation by three levels of government, as well as prices that better match the costs of delivering water and wastewater services, and an expansion in data collection efforts are required to sustainably manage Canada’s groundwater.

For the study go to: http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/Backgrounder_136.pdf

For further information:
James P. Bruce, Former Chair, Council of
Canadian Academies Expert Panel on
Groundwater;
Colin Busby, Senior Policy Analyst,

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Man-made river: Calgary’s Pure Technologies helps keep Libya’s water flowing

CBC Video July 22, 2009 : Man-made river: Calgary’s Pure Technologies helps keep Libya’s water flowing

http://www.cbc.ca/video/popup.html?http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/news/features/evans-lake090722.wmv

http://www.water-technology.net/projects/gmr/

Schematic map of the project. Designed in five phases, which eventually combine to form an integrated system, it is an estimated 25 years from completion.

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From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Manmade_River [accessed July 29, 2009]

 The Great Man-Made River (GMR, النهر الصناعي العظيم) is a network of pipes that supplies water from the Sahara Desert in Libya, from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System fossil aquifer. Some sources cite it as the largest engineering project ever undertaken.

The Guinness World Records 2008 book has acknowledged this as the world’s largest irrigation project.

According to its website, it is the largest underground network of pipes and aqueducts in the world. It consists of more than 1300 wells, most more than 500 m deep, and supplies 6,500,000 m³ of freshwater per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirt and elsewhere. Muammar al-Gaddafi has described it as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

In 1953, efforts to find oil in southern Libya led to the discovery of huge quantities of fresh water underground. The GMRP was conceived in the late 1960s and work on the project began in 1984. The project’s construction was divided into five logically separate phases. The first phase required 85 million m³ of excavation and was inaugurated on August 28, 1991. The second phase (dubbed First water to Tripoli) was inaugurated on September 1, 1996.

The project is owned by the Great Man-Made River Project Authority and funded by the Libyan government. Brown & Root and Price Brothers were responsible for the original design, and the primary contractor for the first phases was Dong Ah Consortium (a South Korean construction company) and present main contractor is Al Nahr Company Ltd. This company was registered in England and Wales as a foreign company FC017848 until July 31, 2003.

The imported goods from several worldwide Countries (such as Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan etc.) destined to the construction of the GMRP arrived by sea via the entry port of Marsa el Brega (Sirte Gulf).

The total cost of the project is projected at more than US$25 billion. Libya claims to have completed the work to date without the financial support of major countries or loans from world banks. Since 1990 UNESCO has provided training to engineers and technicians involved with the project. 172 people died in the construction.

The fossil aquifer from which this water is being supplied is the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System. It accumulated during the last ice age and is not currently being replenished. If 2007 rates of retrieval are not increased,the water could last a thousand years. According to a Nubian Aquifer Project publication, “one expert says that, at current rates of consumption, reserves could be diminished in as short a time period as 100 to 500 years”.

A large, recently-settled lawsuit between the Libyan government and Brasoil, a subsidiary of the Brazilian national oil company, arose from the project. Brasoil was contracted to drill many of the wells in the early stages of the project. Many (hundreds) of the wells in the project collapsed or failed prematurely for unexplained reasons.

 Timeline

Building of the Great Manmade River

• 3 October 1983: The General People’s Congress held an extraordinary session to draft the resolutions of the basic people’s Congresses, which decided to fund and execute the Great Man-Made River Project.

• 28 August 1984: Muammar al-Gaddafi lays the foundation stone in Sarir area for the commencement of the construction of the Great Man-Made River Project.

• 28 August 1986: Muammar al-Qaddafi inaugurated the Brega plant for the production of the Pre-stressed Concrete Cylinder pipes, which are considered the largest pipes made with pre-stressed steel wire (the majority of steel wire was made in Italy by the Redaelli Tecna S.p.A. company with its head office in Cologno Monzese – Milan and its factory in Caivano-Naples). Sarir plant was also inaugurated on this date.

• 26 August 1989: Muammar al-Qaddafi lays the foundation stone for phase II of the Great Man-Made River Project.

 First water arrival

• 11 September 1989: to Ajdabiya reservoir.

• 28 September 1989: to Grand Omar Muktar reservoir.

• 4 September 1991: to Al Gardabiya reservoir.

• 28 August 1996: to Tripoli.

• 28 September 2007: to Gharyan.