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Saskatchewan aims to protect water from source to tap with 25-year plan

via: The Canadian Press
Published Monday, Oct. 15, 2012

The Saskatchewan government has outlined a 25-year plan that it says will protect water supplies from the source to the tap.

The 25 Year Saskatchewan Water Security Plan has seven goals:

  • Sustainable Supplies
  • Safe Drinking Water
  • Protection of Water Resources
  • Safe Dams
  • Flood and Drought Damage Reduction
  • Adequate Data, Information and Knowledge
  • Effective Governance and Engagement

The Vision Statement of the Plan,”Water supporting economic growth, quality of life and environmental well-being” is supported by the following principles:

Long-Term Perspective: Water management decisions will be undertaken within the context of a 25-year time horizon.

Water for Future Generations: A sustainable approach to water use will protect the quality and quantity of water now and for the future.

Integrated Approach to Management: Water decisions will integrate the multiple objectives and information pertaining to the economic development, ecological, hydrological, human health, and social aspects of water, considering circumstances and needs that may be unique to a watershed or region, to achieve a balanced outcome.

Partnerships and Participation: The provincial government will facilitate collaboration in the development and implementation of water management decisions.

Shared Responsibility: All residents, communities and levels of government share responsibility for the wise use and management of water.

Value of Water: Water is essential to life and will be treated as a finite resource that is used efficiently and effectively to best reflect its economic, social, and environmental importance.

Continuous Improvement: Water management will be adaptive and supported by sound monitoring, risk assessment, evaluation, research, innovation, and best practices.

The province says conservation is critical and could be achieved through pricing strategies.

But the plan adds that new reservoirs, pipelines and canals may also be necessary to meet demand.

Water demand is highest in the southern part of the province because of industrial development such as potash mines.

Other goals include ensuring dams meet water supply and management needs safely and making sure measures are in place to respond to floods or drought.

“We want to ensure there is a sustainable water supply available to support our growth, a healthy environment and our quality of life,” Ken Cheveldayoff, minister responsible for the new Water Security Agency, said Monday.

Saskatchewan’s new Water Security Agency will report annually on how the plan is working.

 

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BBC News: River basins ‘vital for growth’

12 June 2012

River basins ‘vital for growth’
By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News

The world’s top river basin regions have a vital role in the future in terms of sustaining economic growth in the future, a report has suggested.

However, current projections show that seven of the top 10 areas are currently using unsustainable volumes of water.

A UN report said the global target of halving the number of people in the world without access to safe drinking water was achieved in March 2012.

The report was commissioned by HSBC, WWF, Earthwatch and WaterAid.

The document, Exploring the Links between Water and Economic Growth, produced by Frontier Economics, recorded that almost 800 million remained without access to safe drinking water, while 2.5bn were without basic access to sanitation.

The report’s authors estimate that nations would see their GDP improve by up to 15% if the global Millennium Development Targets were achieved.

A report published by the UN in March said the international community had acheived the goal of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water.

In the past 20 years, two billion people have gained access to improved drinking water.

However, it acknowledged that global targets to improve sanitation were unlikely to be met by the 2015 deadline.

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) lists 75% of the world’s population benefiting from improved sanitation, yet figures suggest that only 63% of the world’s population currently have improved sanitation access, a figure projected to increase only to 67% by 2015.

This means that 2.5bn people are still without the level of sanitation outlined in the MDGs.

The report by Frontier Economics listed a number of avenues that need to be addressed in order for the “water challenge” to be addressed.

As well as improving the access to drinking water and sanitation, it also listed the need for great efficiency in the way water is consumed within agriculture, industry and domestic sectors.

Continue reading →

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FLOW Speaking Tour Underway Urging Policy Makers to Embrace Water Protection

WATERLOO – Wilfrid Laurier University is hosting  The Forum for Leadership on Water  (FLOW)’s “Northern Voices, Southern Choices: Water Policy Lessons for Canada” cross-country tour on October 25, 2011. During the event, Bob Sandford, a leading water expert, will discuss the need for significant water policy reform.

“The days when Canadians take an abundance of fresh water for granted are numbered,” warns Sandford, who is the EPCOR Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative in support of the United Nations “Water for Life” Decade.

“Increasing average temperatures, climate change impacts on weather patterns and extensive changes in land use are causing incalculable damage to public infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, and seriously impacting water quantity and quality.”

Sandford emphasizes that floods and water damage caused by climate change will cost governments billions of dollars and threaten economic growth unless significant water policy reform is adopted.

“Governments need a Canada-wide strategy that effectively addresses current and emerging threats to freshwater security,” said Sandford. “We have seen what elements of such a strategy could look like thanks to leadership from the Northwest Territories, but other jurisdictions have to act now.”

FLOW is a national collaborative of water experts that encourages government action to protect critical fresh water resources. The group’s cross-Canada tour, which began in early October and runs to the end of November, aims to demonstrate the need to better prepare for climate change, increase civic engagement and think more strategically about water management.

Deb MacLatchy, Laurier’s vice-president: academic and provost and an aquatic toxicologist, will open the Oct. 25 forum. The panel also includes Stephen Kakfwi, former Northwest Territories premier; David Livingstone, former director, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada; and Chris Burn, NSERC Northern Research Chair, Carleton University.

Laurier and the government of the Northwest Territories signed a 10-year partnership agreement in May, 2010 to collaborate on research and training on climate change and water resource protection. The partnership supports the goals of the NWT Water Stewardship Strategy to ensure that the water of the NWT “remains clean, abundant and productive for all time.”

Laurier hosts the Institute for Water Science and Cold Regions Research Centre – multi- disciplinary research institutes that focus on cold regions and water science research, including public policy and management.

The event takes place Thursday, Oct. 25 from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Paul Martin Centre on Laurier’s Waterloo campus. FLOW’s tour is primarily funded by the RBC Blue Water Project.

Tour Cities and Dates

Robert W. Sandford, EPCOR Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative in support of United Nations “Water for Life” Decade, will be speaking at the following places:

Information about the tour dates will be listed as it becomes available.

Generic or specific questions about the tour can be directed to Nancy Goucher.

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G&M: Water risk database initiative launched by US business

A consortium of large U.S. companies including General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical is backing a new initiative to help manage water supplies in regions threatened by shortages, reflecting growing concern about the importance of water to businesses.

The Aqueduct Alliance, backed by seven large U.S. companies and the World Resources Institute, an environmental campaign group, is launching a new database showing water availability at a local level.

The database, which will be available to everyone, is intended to inform investment and planning decisions by businesses and governments, for example, by warning them that a plant might not be able to source the water it needs.

It will also enable investors to assess companies’ exposure to water risk.

Coca-Cola, the soft drinks group, has handed to the new alliance its own proprietary data on water availability, collected over years of research, making it open for general use. “Water is the lifeblood of our business,” said Joe Rozza, the group’s manager of water resources sustainability.

“Doing everything we can to put the fullest possible information about water supplies in front of strategic decision-makers in business, the public sector and non-governmental organisations is infinitely more valuable than anything we could make from selling the data. And it’s the right thing to do.”

Droughts this year in regions such as the southern U.S. and in the Yangtze river basin in China, have highlighted the threats water shortages pose to industrial production, oil and gas extraction and power generation as well as agriculture.

Kirsty Jenkinson of the WRI said: “Companies see the need to get better visibility about water if they are going to have to access it for their business. [With this database], they can see if they are at risk of not getting the water they need, or coming into conflict with other users of that water.”

Kyung-Ah Park, managing director of the environmental markets group at Goldman Sachs, said financial investors were also beginning to take account of water risk in their decisions.

“If you have two companies, A and B, and A has more plants in higher risk areas, then investors will be able to see that and may choose to invest in B instead,” she said.

Groups such as GE that provide water management products and services expect pressure on water supplies to drive demand for their businesses.

The Aqueduct database is initially being published for the Yellow River basin in China, to be followed by four more areas: the Colorado river in the U.S., the Yangtze in China, the Orange-Senqu basin in southern Africa and the Murray-Darling basin in Australia.

It will then be expanded to cover other regions around the world.

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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,

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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Veolia Water Introduces Water Impact Index as Part of First-Ever Water Carbon Footprint Study

Source: Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies North America
Jul. 19, 2010

MILWAUKEE – Veolia Water North America (Veolia Water) today unveiled the Water Impact Index, the first indicator enabling a comprehensive assessment of the impact of human activity on water resources. The company also announced what is believed to be the first-ever simultaneous analysis of water and carbon on a major metropolitan area’s water cycle.

The Water Impact Index expands on existing volume-based water measurement tools by incorporating multiple factors including consumption, resource stress and water quality.

Fresh water availability has been predicted to become a major limitation factor for growth for cities and industries in many locations around the world, and the need to understand and quantify the impact on water resources is becoming essential to maintaining their sustainability and future prosperity. This reality requires an understanding of the factors needed to make the most appropriate, sustainable decisions. The new tool will provide additional parameters that decision-makers need to make these decisions.

“The framework that we used has broad application for public- and private-sector decision makers, and enables them to take into account a broader set of environmental and cost factors,” said Laurent Auguste, president and CEO of Veolia Water Americas. “The simultaneous assessment of water and carbon, along with economic analysis, provides organizations with a more comprehensive framework for making truly sustainable decisions. With this achievement, Milwaukee is further demonstrating its unique leadership in advancing the case of sustainable fresh water resource management, and with this new initiative, our partnership is further developing the path to sustainability.”

The Water Impact Index establishes the impact of human activity on water resources and provides a methodology for establishing the positive and negative implications of how water resources are managed. The study is the first to take the balance of both carbon and water into consideration, and assigns a value to water based on quality, quantity and resource stress.

This water/energy/economic nexus study was possible through support from the City of Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Water Council, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) and various water and energy utilities serving the area’s 1.1 million people. Milwaukee’s progressive actions and position toward water issues of the future made it a natural fit for the pioneering study. It is the only United Nations Global Compact City focused on freshwater management, which requires the city to carry out a variety of water-quality projects that can be emulated by other cities.

Selected key findings include:

  • Even in a water-rich environment like Milwaukee, public water conservation has a needed positive impact on water resources and carbon emissions.
  • A new project to replace natural gas and electricity demand via landfill gas will significantly reduce both the Carbon Footprint and the Water Impact Index, reinforcing the project’s relevance.
  • The Water Impact Index shows that in Milwaukee, the impact of one gallon of a combined sewer overflow (CSO) is 465 percent higher than one gallon of treated wastewater. It also shows that the Water Impact Index of green solutions envisioned by Milwaukee, such as wetlands development, is approximately 12 times lower than the one from CSOs. MMSD has already been exploring these options and the study results confirm their choice and future plans.
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GreenBiz: Water’s Trickle-Down Business Model

Entrepreneur and lawyer Kevin McGovern has founded 15 companies. Some are household names, like Sobe Beverages, which he sold to PepsiCo for a reported $370 million in 2000. Others are quieter money-makers, like Tristrata, which owns 150 patents related to alpha hydroxy acids, a key ingredient in skin care products.

None, he predicts, will have the impact of his newest venture, a startup called The Water Initiative that aims to help solve the world’s water crisis by treating contaminated water at the point of use. It’s a simple idea — sell  equipment that will purify water to local distributors in poor communities around the world.

McGovern and his company are operating in a couple of cities in Mexico, selling water purifiers for about $150 each to distributors who then lease them to families for about $3 a week. “It’s franchise model, a multi-level marketing approach,” he says. The Mexican government recently asked him to expand the business nationally.

While the company is small, McGovern has lined up some big-name supporters. Producer-musician Quincy Jones is honorary chairman of The Water Initiative. Indian business mogul Ranan Tata is an investor and adviser. So is Cornell University professor Stuart Hart, a pioneering thinker about business and sustainability and co-author, with C.K. Prahalad, of the 2002 article, “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” which provided the first articulation of how business could profitably serve the needs of the four billion poor in the developing world.

The Water Initiative is a classic bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) business. To give it a chance to succeed, McGovern is relying on the insights of customers to help develop products, a business model and distribution network.

“People can solve their own problems,” McGovern says. “Talk to those who are affected. Listen to them, engage with them, co-create with them. That’s what The Water Initiative is about.”

“We call ourselves pro bono capitalists,” he says. “We’re doing good, and we’re going to make a lot of money.”

I first heard Kevin McGovern speak last fall during the Net Impact conference at Cornell University, which he entered as a scholarship student from Queens and left as a devoted alumni. He’s now a member of the Board of Trustees and a lecturer at the Johnson School of Business. We sat down a few months later in Washington, where he explained the origins of The Water Initiative. Part of his impetus was business, part was personal, he explained.

McGovern, it turns out, has been in the business of water for more than 20 years. He was a founder of a small company called KX Industries, which developed technology for both the PUR water filter, which is now owned by Procter & Gamble, and an end-of-tap water filter for Brita, which is now a unit of Clorox. So he understands clean-water technology, and has come to believe that point-of-use solutions, as opposed to massive investment in infrastructure, are the best way to deliver clean drinking water to the poor.

“It’s to the people, through the people and for the people,” he says. “The only long-term answer to the problem of water is a distributed network to every home.”

The alternative, he said, are costly water treatment plants, where most of the expense goes to make water safe for drinking and cooking, but only about 2 percent of the water that’s pushed through the system is actually used for those purposes. That’s inefficient.

His personal reason for starting the business emerged several years ago after McGovern had hip replacement surgery, which immobilized him for eight weeks and gave him plenty of time to think. He told me:  “I said to myself, ‘If the funeral was tomorrow, what do I want to be known for? Do I want to be known for my children? Yes. Do I want to be known for Cornell? Yes.’ But I felt I really had to do something to impact the world.” More people die of water-borne diseases that all communicable diseases combined, he found.

Read more: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/04/05/water-trickle-down-business-model#ixzz0kKHqgbvN

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Lack of Awareness About Water Risks Threatens to Sink Global Firms

Source: GreenBiz.com, 11 February 2010

Although many consider water to be “free,” its growing scarcity promises to carry a hefty price tag for the world’s businesses and for those who have invested in them.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of large publicly traded companies are failing to adequately manage and disclose the risks they face from water scarcity, an issue that will likely become more acute as the world’s population increases and the future impacts of climate change come to pass, according to new Ceres research.

The nonprofit investor advocacy group released a report today evaluating the corporate water disclosure practices of 100 large companies, while also offering a roadmap for reporting water data in a way that is useful for investors and stakeholders.

Ceres published “Murky Waters? Corporate Reporting on Water Risk” on the heels of guidance released by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on how public companies disclose climate change risks. The SEC specifically refers to water issues, saying, “Changes in the availability or quality of water … can have materials effects on companies.”

Many have begun referring to water as the “new carbon” because of its anticipated prominence as an emerging business risk. In response to increasing investor concerns over water, the Carbon Disclosure Project , which solicits greenhouse gas emissions data from companies on behalf of institutional investors, recently launched CDP Water Disclosure , adding to the growing list of impacts companies are being asked to report on. Coincidentally, the first Forest Footprint Disclosure report was released this week, evaluating how global companies are managing their forest impacts.

The new Ceres report found that some of the sectors most vulnerable to water stress were also the most advanced reporters. For example, the mining and beverage industry’s received the highest overall points. As a whole, the homebuilding sector lagged.

The highest sector performers were: Diageo (43/100 points, Beverage), Pinnacle West/Arizona Public Services (38/100 points, Electric Power), Unilever (34/100 points, Food), Xstrata (42/100 points, Mining), BP (35/100 points, Oil & Gas), Toshiba (35/100 points, Semiconductors), Mitsui (33/112 points, Chemicals) and KB Home (15/112 points, Homebuilding).

While most companies are reporting basic water information, such as for overall water use or water scarcity risks, the research showed they have a long way to go. The vast majority fails to disclose water risk or performance data in their financial reports, local-level water data — especially important in the context of their operations in water-stressed regions, or suppliers’ water performance, despite the fact that the majority of many corporate water footprints in found in supply chains.

The risks posed by water scarcity are diverse. The physical risks, for instance, can disrupt business activity, evidenced by the multi-year drought in California, which led farmers to allow more than 100,000 acres of land to go unplanted or be simply abandoned. There are also threats to corporate reputations, where increased competition for water supplies can turn companies and communities against one another, especially in emerging markets where water scarcity issues are more acute.

There is however, glimmers of hope. The U.S., for instance, is using less water than it did a generation ago. There are also opportunities that are being enjoyed by savvy companies, according to Brooke Barton, lead author of the report. “At the same time,” she said, “companies like Dow and DuPont see competitive advantages to making their products more water efficient.”

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McKinseyQ : Strategic Water Management (interview with Rio Tinto)

Water management has become a strategic issue for Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest mining groups, whose operations tend to be located in areas that are either arid or plagued by torrential rains. In this video interview, CEO Tom Albanese discusses the economics of water, the role of climate change, and how Rio Tinto is adapting its operations and seeking to make water management a source of advantage. Bill Javetski, an editor with the McKinsey Publishing group, conducted the interview with Tom Albanese in Durham, North Carolina.

Read the interview (pre-registration required)

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The Working with Water interview (May09): Rebuilding New Orleans

The Working with Water interview:  Rebuilding New Orleans

Working with Water spoke with David Waggonner, principal at Waggonner & Ball Architects, in May 2009 about the importance of integrating water into the city structure of New Orleans.

Leading the rebuild of the water damaged city is a challenge – not only must lessons be learned from existing and temporary infrastructure and political failures, but successful processes elsewhere in the world must be integrated with the uniqueness of New Orleans.
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What are your plans for New Orleans?
What we’re trying to do is to get the whole area to think about water in a different way. When you’ve had a catastrophe like this, the normal tendency is never to want to see water again. That condemns you to a wrong way of thinking. There are ways to manage water – providing space for water to increase safety and to generate economic value – a lot of science and art can be employed to use water in the right way. It’s not exactly a cure, but a way of thinking holistically about water, which is practically never done in the US. We’re trying to introduce this concept to an environment that has been traumatised – to induce a discussion and develop a plan to live with the water.  

What are you trying to achieve in the next five years?
There are things that should happen in the next five years, but if events go the way they’re going at the moment, we won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunities that the city has. We’re trying to get people to connect each element of infrastructure with its larger context and the landscape. For example, there are a series of outfall canals that drain into Lake Pontchartrain. The Corps [the US Army Corps of Engineers, a unit of the US military which is responsible for providing vital civil engineering and infrastructure works, as well as investigating, developing and maintaining water and related environmental resources] has built temporary protection at the end of each canal at the lakefront. These are the canals with low levees and I-walls on top of them that failed after Katrina. The storm surge is being kept out of the city now and the flood walls are being repaired, but there’s no agreement about a comprehensive solution. The Corps is not looking at this in a co-ordinated way. What we need is a set of dual purpose pumps at the lakefront, to keep out the storms and drain the interior. This would allow us to remove the I-walls and open the city in these locations to the waterways. We risk ending up with a wasteful series of actions that don’t take advantage of the opportunity to change the city to make it both safer and more attractive. We talk about the city being safer, but it has to be more attractive as well.  

How are the public reacting to your ideas – trying to integrate water more into the landscape?
There have been very few negative reactions. There have been people who say “I don’t want any water in my neighbourhood – I’m just going to raise my house.” Usually these are people who are isolated and angry, who were flooded by the levee failures. People are looking for some way to reconstruct the city but the scale of the city is too big for the population we have now – and there is not enough funding for the reconstruction of the entire infrastructure. The City of New Orleans is populated with maybe 300,000 people and if you can’t afford an infrastructure for a city of 600,000, what do you do? There are difficult political decisions still to make. I believe we need to think of water as an entity, in its entirety, There’s not a rigid order water has to follow, it can be split according to conditions, it doesn’t have to go in straight lines, it can be implemented incrementally – but there still has to be some overall framework and system capacity. This framework has to fit with pre-existing conditions, including the base topographic layer and the settlement pattern. So, what we’re trying to do is find a strategy with potential for acceptance and the techniques to do it right.  


How long do you think the rebuild will take? Do you think New Orleans needs an ongoing process to adapt to its threatened environment?
If New Orleans succeeds, it will be making these moves and taking these incremental steps ad infinitum. You can look at it from bigger elements down to smaller elements and vice versa – every piece of property needs to account for water in a different way. In the Netherlands, the Dutch develop an area – called a polder – that has a perimeter and works as a unit for storm water management. This approach allows finite calculations – working out how much land is needed, how you hold that storm water so it doesn’t flood the system. We might develop polders; we might be able to create a canal system in certain sub basins in the city; but we will need to demonstrate how this would be of benefit. The history of New Orleans with regards to water is that for a hundred years the inhabitants have been pumping it away and hiding it from sight, so it’s a difficult reversal.    

Is the political situation in New Orleans a hindrance to its development?
Absolutely. The lack of a leader, the lack of somebody who can see the way forward, see the way things have to be done and communicate the benefit of the changes we need is a hindrance. People are tired of planning processes that just go out and ask individuals and groups where they live and what they want. We have to be able to demonstrate to people that they are going to be better off with a new water infrastructure. We have to find a way, which I can’t find by myself, to compensate people if we expect them to relocate for public benefit.

Read the rest of the interview

Hopes for the future
I think by looking comprehensively at water we can re-invent ourselves and our city. We need to think about our microclimate but also engage an international knowledge base about the best practices for the water. The Netherlands is the leader – there is no other place where people deal so consistently and so confidently with water – so it’s an obvious choice to go to the people who know most.  

Engineering is such a fallen discipline in the US – not all engineering of course – but we have lost a lot. I think that architects and engineers have a role to play in the future of New Orleans and the world with design informing politics rather than just being a victim of it or supplicant to it.  

So that is key to what we’re trying to do – to show that water infrastructure design can inform politics with new ideas that can benefit us all.

– J. David Waggonner