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Latest news about the Safe Drinking Water Team
It’s an area of farmland Ryan Maurer says is worth as much as a Lamborghini. High run-off flooded one of his fields in spring 2022, leaving shallow pools of water. This was before the farmer opened ditches to drain it. “Would you take your Lamborghini and park it in a slough?” Maurer asked on his farm near Grenfell, Sask., about 125 kilometres east of Regina.
Data for water management across sectors is now open for public use through a platform by the Water Security Agency of Saskatchewan, but at least one group is skeptical of how useful it will be for their businesses. The Saskatchewan government earlier this week announced the launch of what it calls a GeoHub portal for access to data for better water management. The portal combines geographic information systems to provide greater access to information, primarily when making decisions around agricultural operations, planning, or research in the province.
The Government of Saskatchewan is putting $1.9 million towards remote monitoring technology for rural water treatment facilities. The 10 projects will go through the Saskatchewan Advantage Innovation Fund (SAIF) and the Agtech Growth Fund (AGF), run under the auspices of the Innovation Saskatchewan government agency. One of the projects will be led by Saskatoon-based Delco Water, which is working with rural municipalities and First Nations, including the Meadow Lake Tribal Council, to develop and pilot remote sensing technologies.
A First Nation is working alongside a B.C. tech company to learn more about how climate change is affecting the waters it harvests food from. In an effort to preserve and even build up capacity for seafood harvesting, the T'Sou-ke First Nation on southern Vancouver Island turned to Victoria-based MarineLabs, which collects real-time data about the ocean, about 18 months ago to better understand what's going on in the Sooke Basin and other areas it uses.
This week's heavy rainfall in Saskatchewan might have felt a bit excessive, especially for those in areas that were already drenched, but it has helped significantly in regions that needed the moisture. Some communities in the province are already above their average June rainfall amounts. According to Environment and Climate Change Canada data, North Battleford sits at about 110 millimetres so far this month. The city usually receives 65 mm in the entire month. About 101 mm fell in the span of a few hours on Tuesday.
Canada will collect data on the impact of siting a disproportionate number of polluting industries and landfills in areas inhabited by racial minority communities, federal lawmakers voted Wednesday. The bill aims to tackle "environmental racism," where Indigenous, Black and other racial minority communities are exposed to higher levels of dirty air, contaminated water or other toxins and pollutants. One of the most famous cases is in the Indigenous Grassy Narrows First Nation community in Ontario, where residents have since the 1960s suffered health impacts from mercury contamination produced by a former pulp and paper mill.
Rebecca Zagozewski, executive director with the Saskatchewan First Nations Water Association, says cisterns can pose health risks to those who rely on them. She says the structures can have cracked lids, which allows all sorts of debris to get into them — including rats, mice, drowned puppies and garbage — and they’re often not cleaned properly. On top of that, she says the Saskatchewan First Nations Water Association is concerned that there is no certification program for water truck drivers. The group wants to create such a program where drivers would have to be trained in how to keep the water safe and be held accountable if things go wrong. “Because right now there’s no accountability,” she says.
Maitland Conservation (MC), formerly Maitland Valley Conservation Authority (MCVA), has been monitoring two agricultural sub-watersheds to address water quality concerns and the effects of farming practices on local water. Ben Van Dieten, Agricultural Stewardship Technician, and Chris Van Esbroeck, Stewardship Services Coordinator of MC, presented their findings to date on these projects, in terms of how and when sediment and nutrients leave the landscape, and the practices they promote to reduce these losses.
