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Latest news about the Safe Drinking Water Team
The chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation is voicing his concern over yet another incident at the Kearl oilsands facility, located about a 90-minute drive north of Fort McMurray. In a statement issued Thursday, Chief Allan Adam said the Nov. 13 incident, involving water, has “once again impacted the environment on our traditional territories.”
After a wildfire tore through the forest around Kakisa, N.W.T., in 2014, Lloyd Chicot began noticing changes in the lake: the pickerel grew fatter, and the pelicans moved in. Chicot, the chief of Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation, attributes the change partly to climate change and partly to runoff from the fire, which brought nutrients and debris into the lake. "Right after the fire, there was a lot of burnt driftwood and that kind of stuff," he recalled.
Is it possible to reduce the amount of phosphorus being released from agricultural land and into waterways, such as Lake Winnipeg, during the spring melt? It’s a question UWinnipeg Professor Dr. Darshani Kumaragamage, Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences, and her research team are trying to answer. In most parts of the world, erosion, and rain-driven runoff are the major pathways by which phosphorus from agricultural fields enter waterbodies. However, in cold climates like the Canadian prairies, flooding-induced phosphorus loss during the snowmelt period is the dominant transport mechanism of phosphorus from agricultural lands to water bodies.
A preliminary report from the Saskatchewan Water Security Agency (WSA) states the spring melt rate is expected to have a significant impact on runoff yields in southern areas of the province. How that impacts subsoil moisture levels or surface water supplies depends on the speed of the melt, the report states. Most southern regions experienced very dry conditions last summer and into the fall freeze-up, and a below snowmelt runoff potential is being forecast by the WSA.
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.
