Water, Water, Everywhere
February 22, 2012
By Kim Green
Alberta development, drought and ongoing climate change could transform an oasis of prosperity into a future mirage
[Editor's Note: Article originally appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of New Trail.]
There is no such thing as new water. The Earth is a closed system and the water that quenched the thirst of dinosaurs is the same recycled water we’re drinking today. In fact, it’s been estimated that eight people before you have consumed every glass of water you drink so the same molecules of H2O that passed over the lips of Napoleon, Columbus, Joan of Arc or Shakespeare could be snaking their way through an underground labyrinth of pipes to a faucet in your home or office.
Canada has always pictured itself as a country blessed with an abundance of fresh water. And, to some extent, that’s true as our per-capita water supply places us among the top six water-rich countries in the world. Perhaps that’s why we’re so profligate with its use, ranking second only to Americans in our consumption of the precious resource. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canadians use about 1,600 cubic metres of water per person per year, more than would run out of a tap if it were left running for three months straight. Our water consumption is 65 percent over the OECD average and twice as much as the average person from France, three times the average German, four times the average Swede, and over eight times the average Dane.
Aqueducts to supply water to cities were first devised in the Middle East millennia ago. In the 7th century BC the Assyrians built a limestone aqueduct 10 metres high that carried water 300 metres over a valley to their capital city of Nineveh. Over 2,000 years ago Rome built its first of 11 aqueducts, the Aqua Appia. Eventually Rome would build over 420 kilometres of these engineering marvels, most of them running underground to keep them free from disease and resistant to attack.
But before the aqueducts, Rome got much of its water from the Tiber River (as well as local springs and shallow wells) that eventually became polluted by the city’s burgeoning population to the point where other water had to be brought in. The Tiber is an aquatic resource without which Rome would never have become, well, Rome. Likewise there would be no New York without the Hudson, London without the Thames, Edmonton without the North Saskatchewan, or Calgary without the Bow.
Traditionally cities have sprung up where there was access to fresh water for drinking, sanitation, agriculture and, often, transportation. But the fact is that most of the planet’s water is in the ocean, leaving only about three percent theoretically available for human consumption with two percent of that locked in polar ice caps or lying deep underground. As New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter wrote in a 2006 article, “If a large bucket were to represent all the seawater on the planet, and a coffee cup the amount of fresh water frozen in glaciers, only a teaspoon would remain for us to drink.”
And that teaspoon is increasingly under threat from pollution and global warming. All the major rivers in Alberta begin their life in the Rocky Mountains where they are fed by glacial melt. So you can imagine what the future will hold for the Bow, Athabasca, and Saskatchewan rivers if the glaciers that feed them disappear, as they are increasingly showing signs of doing. The glaciers that nourish all three rivers have retreated by 25 percent over the last century and are now 1.5 kilometres or more upslope from where they were in the early 20th century.
Recent research findings — funded by the National Science Council and NASA and conducted by a team of scientists from McGill University, the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Science Foundation — stated that summers at the North Pole could be ice-free by as early as 2040. There was also the 2005 phenomenon (not reported until 2006) of the gigantic ice shelf that snapped free of its Ellesmere Island home (about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole), drifting west for 50 kilometres before getting trapped in sea ice. The snappage of the approximately 60-million-square-metre-sized ice shelf (slightly larger than the island of Manhattan) was so powerful earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away picked it up. It’s possible spring thaw and prevailing winds could push the ice island deep into the Beaufort Sea where it could pose a hazard to shipping.
A massive new four-part report — the first section is 1,600 pages long — prepared by over 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that global warming has arrived and is only going to get worse. Commenting on the report, Jerry Mahlman, U.S. climate scientist and former director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, “Global warming is here and it’s happening now, it’s very obvious. When you look at the temperature of the Earth, it’s pretty much a no-brainer.”
Although global warming is only one of the factors in this latest Ellesmere Island ice shelf loss, the fact remains that the Island has lost 90 percent of its ice shelves in the 20th century, effectively meaning that the map of the region will have to be redrawn to reflect the new physical landscape. For over a quarter century the winter sea ice in the far north has been receding by about 1.5 percent a decade. During the last two years that rate of decline has increased by as much as 15 percent. This poses a serious threat to polar bears that need the ice to hunt seals on. Retreating ice also means more heat arriving in the Arctic in the form of warmer ocean water, which in turn absorbs still more sunlight further accelerating ice melt in the region and beyond, including the melting of the mountain glaciers that feed our rivers.
Alberta, like much of B.C. and Saskatchewan, lies in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains and the southern portions of these provinces comprise the driest large area of southern Canada. And although in recent years precipitation in Alberta has been sufficient to sustain growth, there’s no reason to believe that this circumstance will continue. Research conducted at the U of A by David Schindler and William Donahue, ’87 BSc, ’90 BSc (SpecCert), ’00 PhD, found that the region’s climate has been unusually stable and moist in the 20th century and that the drought that occurred in what is commonly known as the Dirty ’30s was mild in comparison to earlier centuries where several droughts per century were common, often lasting as long as several decades.
That’s the bad news. The good news? Well, there are many people working to try to make a difference, to alert us to the current state of water affairs as well as the dangers ahead and the ways in which it may be possible to chart a new course for a more sustainable future.
************************************
Read more about research by some of the U of A's foremost water experts in New Trail:
David Schindler: Thinking Globally
Steve Hrudey: Acting Locally
Mike Belosevic: Toxin Testing
Cynthia Paszkowski: Frogs and Toads