Here in Canada, we tend to think that while water scarcity, drying rivers and toxic lakes may be huge global problems, they really only affect places like China and the Middle East. But the rapid development of Alberta's oil sands, coupled with accelerating population growth and climate change, has turned arid Alberta into Canada's ground zero for water. Our history is all about exploiting our abundance of natural resources, and Alberta is the embodiment of the frontier's boundless promise. Could our tradition of taming the landscape finally have been arrested by something as humble as H20?
The water experts say yes. The Canadian dean of the discipline, the University of Alberta's David Schindler, wrote in 2006 that Alberta, along with Saskatchewan and Manitoba, will soon face "a crisis in water quantity and quality with far-reaching implications." Natural Resources Canada has predicted shortages for Calgary as early as 2050 if conservation efforts don't improve drastically. The federal government's 2007 report on the oil sands concluded that "the Athabasca basin could encounter serious problems unless there is a radical change in water use."
While the energy boom is bringing the issue to a head, Alberta's looming water crisis owes something to natural factors as well as human-made ones. Lying in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, the province is one of the driest places in Canada, with but 2.2% of the nation's fresh water. It's also prone to long, bone-bleaching droughts. Both historical accounts and tree-ring studies show that European immigrants settled the province during the wettest century in the last 2,000 years. This data also suggests that the dust bowl of the Dirty Thirties was a minor event and that no European has ever seen the kind of 20-year droughts that have characterized Alberta's climate over the millenniums.
In addition, Alberta shares with the rest of the nation a geographic vulnerability. Most of its water is in the north while most of its people live in the south. Albertans are concentrated in the South Saskatchewan River basin, where the city of Calgary, industry and irrigation drink lots of water. Yet the basin and its northern cousin, which drain into Hudson Bay, hold only 20% of the province's supply. Northern rivers such as the Athabasca and the Peace carry about 80% of the province's water into Canada's largest watershed, the Mackenzie River basin, which drains into the Arctic.
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Unlike most of the country, however, Alberta has a regulatory system that allocates blue gold on a "first in time and first in right" basis. The system "is designed to deal with shortages," explains John Thompson, an Edmonton-based resource economist and water expert. During periods of scarcity, the rules are clear: Those who hold the oldest licences get the water; the newest ones, as Thompson puts it, must "stand back from the trough."
River basins, of course, need water for fish, birds and wetlands as well as for human uses. Prompted by declining river flows and fish kills, the province dramatically closed the South Saskatchewan River basin two years ago, ruling that no one can put more straws into the river.
The overallocation that led to the closure has been compounded by a paucity of data on surface water and groundwater. A 2008 report by the Alberta Water Council, a non-profit watchdog set up by the province, described "the availability, quality and accessibility of data" as a concern. The alert was echoed by the Petroleum Technology Alliance of Canada, a non-profit research group that regards water as "the environmental issue of the century." In a recent paper, the alliance concluded that "rapidly growing demands for water, where data is limited due to reduced government-supported data-gathering in the last 20 to 40 years, will drive and limit development."
Climate change has also begun to disrupt the province's water budget. A warmer and more extreme climate means less water when you need it most. (It can also mean too much water when you need it least.) Thanks to temperature increases of two to four degrees over the past 30 years, most Rocky Mountain glaciers have lost nearly a third of their mass, while snow packs, the source of most drinking water, have also shrunk. As a consequence, river flows in the summer have declined by 30% to 85%. Schindler predicts that a collision of population growth, drought and climate warming will soon teach "Albertans first-hand what water scarcity is all about." He thinks that rapid oil sands development may well be water's tipping point. While some in the industry agree, many others see shortfalls as another challenging opportunity that calls for technological fixes. "With the pressure on water in northern Alberta, one thing is for sure," says John Robertson, a senior manager with CH2M Hill, the global engineering giant: The industry will have to spend "hundreds of millions in the next few years to treat and reuse water."
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