SK Statement of Expectations on Water Protection
Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 5:38 pmSaskatchewan Citizens’ Statement of Expectations on Water Protection and Governance
http://www.environmentalsociety.ca/issu ... tement.pdf
Preface
Citizens and organizations concerned about water quality, water governance, environmental protection, sustainability, and human health wish to provide guidance to Saskatchewan’s provincial and municipal governments. Thus, we are collectively drafting this Statement of Expectations. The intent is that once the Statement is complete, numerous organizations will sign on in support and then present it to government as a blueprint for progressive water policies in this province, and across the prairie watersheds we share with Alberta and Manitoba.
This “discussion version” of the Statement of Expectations is a first, changeable outline—a framework onto which we can add details and entire sections. The headings and statements below are preliminary—to provoke and focus discussions.
Introduction: An integrated, holistic approach to water protection
A. Saskatchewan needs a holistic water management system in which all aspects of water protection, planning, monitoring, and governance are integrated; and in which water management and protection are, in turn, incorporated into other planning and regulatory structures: urban development, land-use planning, agricultural policy, environmental protection, energy policy, etc. All governments and agencies must co-operate and collaborate to ensure effective protection.
B. Because of the primacy of water—to human health, ecosystem function, and our society and economy—the protection of water quality and quantity must be a first priority. Where policies intersect and overlap (and sometimes conflict), water protection measures, and other key environmental and human health protections, must supersede other policies and legislation.
C. An integrated and holistic methodology would include several approaches to water management, protection, and governance, including:
(i) Source Water Protection (as part of multi-barrier protection for drinking water quality and human health);
(ii) Watershed-based planning;
(iii) Prioritizing ecosystem needs for water;
(iv) Expanded and integrated water monitoring;
(v) Water conservation;
(vi) A commitment to minimize interventions in natural water flows and
watersheds (pursuing alternatives to dams, diversions, etc.);
(vii) Maintaining water as a public good and a public trust and maximizing
collective ownership, equitable access, and democratic control.
1. Source Water Protection
A. Saskatchewan, like many other jurisdictions, has adopted the “multi-barrier” approach to protecting drinking water quality and, thus, human health. The three barriers most often cited are:
(i) Source Water Protection—keeping water clean and abundant by preventing contamination and by fostering the water purification actions of healthy, functioning watershed ecosystems;
(ii) Making water safe—effective water treatment to remove any remaining impurities; and
(iii) Proving it’s safe—testing and monitoring to ensure safety and swift corrective action if contaminants enter the drinking water supply.
B. Source Water Protection means protecting the watersheds, forests, riparian zones, rivers, lakes, and wetlands that replenish and purify our ground- and surfacewater supplies. It is less expensive to keep water clean than to clean it.
C. The watershed landscape can function to purify water, and it can be the source of toxins and contaminants. In the southern part of the province, that watershed landscape is largely agricultural. Thus, for many Saskatchewan citizens and communities, Source Water Protection means paying careful attention to agricultural practices, and to improving those practices if they pose a threat to water quality or quantity. In northern Saskatchewan, mining and forestry have large impacts on the watershed landscape. Protecting these watersheds will require large improvements in the way that we protect and manage forests, handle mine wastes, plan roads and other access, and generally deal with sensitive northern ecosystems.
D. Governments at all levels must work to make effective Source Water Protection a reality. Saskatchewan governments must then work with governments in other provinces to implement effective Source Water Protection measures up and down our shared watersheds. In addition, the provincial government must work with the federal government where jurisdictions overlap and where First Nations rights are involved.
E. Governments must integrate Source Water Protection into all policy and
planning processes. Where priorities and policies conflict, however, water
protection measures—and other key environmental and human health protections—must supersede other policies, legislation, regulations, and economic development initiatives.
F. In pursuing Source Water Protection as part of a multi-barrier approach to drinking water safety, our provincial and local governments must work to ensure equal protection for all citizens—rural and urban, northern and southern. As the government’s Safe Drinking Water Strategy says: “Everyone in Saskatchewan needs a good supply of safe, clean drinking water.” [Emphasis added]
Wetlands conservation - Wetlands are critical ecosystems; they play a vital role in ground-water recharge and surfacewater purification. Many human activities—agriculture, forestry, urban development, roadbuilding, etc.—are reducing the number and area of wetlands. Any credible commitment to Source Water Protection and a multi-barrier approach to drinking water safety must include effective action to stop the loss of wetlands.
2. Watershed-based planning
A. Watershed-based planning recognizes the inherent connectivity between and among surface- and ground-water systems, between water bodies and their surrounding watershed ecosystems, and between ecosystems and human societies and economies. An integrated, holistic approach to water protection, management, monitoring, and governance is impossible without watershed-based planning.
B. The provincial government has committed to watershed-based planning. To give effect to its commitment, the government and its Saskatchewan Watershed Authority (SWA) have set up several Watershed Advisory Committees (WACs) charged with drafting objectives and action plans for Source Water Protection within their watersheds. [These Plans often go beyond actual “Source Water Protection” (i.e.
drinking water protection) and deal with diverse watershed protection measures.]
C. Citizens are pleased by provincial and local government actions to facilitate watershed-based planning. The current process, however, requires strengthening if it is to fully protect watershed ecosystems and human health. Necessary improvements to the watershed-based planning process include:
(i) The Saskatchewan government, in consultation with citizens and experts, needs to develop overarching principles and priorities to guide WACs toward ambitious outcomes that fully protect human health and watershed integrity;
(ii) The WACs need to develop watershed-appropriate plans based on those guiding principles and priorities in order that watershed protection across the province is uniformly effective and fully integrated;
(iii) WACs require additional resources (funding, staff, and access to
independent expert opinion) to ensure that their recommendations are based on the best possible data and understanding of their watersheds and the larger regions in which their watersheds are located;
(iv) The government should re-examine the composition of WACs to ensure broad participation in (and democratic control of) these Committees and the watershed-based planning processes; the government must remove barriers to participation—especially for First Nations, rural, and northern citizens;
(v) All players—provincial and local governments, SWA, and the WACs—need to ensure that Source Water Protection is fully integrated into other planning and policy areas (e.g. agriculture, energy, cities, and highways);
(vi) Governments must commit to implementing WAC recommendations where those recommendations are consistent with the goals and directions set down by policymakers and citizens (see point i, above) and governments need to back up their commitments with adequate funding; and
(vii) The provincial government should require watershed-based plans for all Saskatchewan watersheds and aquifers.
3. Prioritizing ecosystem needs for water
A. Over the long term, humans cannot prosper by overtaxing and degrading the natural ecosystems that underpin our societies and economies. Maintaining sufficient water within ecosystems and the integrity and resilience of ecosystem processes must be primary and central considerations at all levels of decision making, up and down the watershed. Ecosystems must be recognized as legitimate users of water. Water should be allocated for ecosystems and basic human needs first, and only after those ecosystem and basic human needs are fully met should any remainder be allocated.
B. To give concrete form to this commitment to respect ecosystem needs for water (also called “in-stream flows”) governments and co-operating agencies need to make additional efforts to measure and monitor water flows within ecosystems, to fully develop the science that can help us to determine ecosystem needs, and to understand the connections between and among water-bodies and their ecosystems.
4. Expanded and integrated water monitoring and measurement;
A. A holistic and integrated water protection and management system must rest atop effective and detailed water monitoring. We need detailed knowledge of:
(i) water quality and water quantity;
(ii) ecosystem needs for water;
(iii) human activities in the watershed landscape;
(iv) seasonal and extreme-weather impacts on water quality and quantity;
(v) the health and numbers of aquatic animals and insects;
(vi) medium- and long-term trends and drivers (especially climate change
impacts on watersheds and water quantity and quality);
(vii) existing and potential water quality “hot spots” and significant pointsource contamination sites;
(viii) the interaction and cumulative effects of contaminants;
(ix) emerging threats, such as pharmaceuticals; and
(x) the locations where gaps exists in our knowledge and data.
B. In addition, our water monitoring and protection efforts must respect and integrate First Nations peoples’ traditional knowledge of their watershed ecosystems.
C. The provincial government—working with its Departments and Agencies and consulting with the citizens and scientists—must create an integrated water monitoring and assessment system that measures all significant water parameters and effectively integrates and synthesizes these measurements to give us a clear picture of watershed health and human impacts.
D. In addition to measurements and data, we need benchmarks and thresholds—the creation of which will challenge us to integrate our best science into broadly-based democratic decision making processes. This challenge must be fully understood: science alone cannot set thresholds for acceptable effects or determine acceptable tradeoffs. For example, tarsands development, pulp mills, large livestock operations, coal-fired electricity generation, irrigation water withdrawals, crop production, and a host of other human activities all have adverse impacts on watershed ecosystems. While science can help us make decisions based on data,
many decisions come down to values and democratic decision making (e.g. How much wetland area do we need? How wide do riverside riparian buffers need to be?) Answering such questions requires our best science embedded within broadbased democratic and forward-looking decision making structures.
E. Further, data and information gathering and democratic decision-making must be fully integrated with the various watershed Source Water Protection Plans created by the Watershed Advisory Committees.
5. Conservation, demand side management, and the Soft Path for Water
A. Ecosystems evolved in conjunction with their water supplies. While humans will continue to take water from ecosystems, it should be with the understanding that these systems contain no “surplus” water. Thus, minimizing human withdrawals and maximizing water efficiency and productivity must be primary aims.
B. In the “Soft Path for Water,” water conservation and efficiency are taken a step further, and citizens and governments are challenged to re-imagine how we can obtain the benefits we now receive from water—attractive yards, sanitation, energy and industrial production, etc.—by using less water, or by using alternatives to water.
The Soft Path is one essential tool in helping us move beyond manipulating and overtaxing our watersheds to managing human activity within those watersheds.
C. The Soft Path strategy also challenges policymakers and water managers to look ahead 25 or 50 years, to understand changes and trends, to choose a future that provides for both human and ecosystem needs, and then to “backcast” a set of steps that will move us to that preferred future. Whereas watershed-based planning expands the planning horizon geographically—away from the water’s edge and into the surrounding ecosystem; the Soft Path’s backcasting approach broadens the planning horizon temporally—focusing us on a desired future. A long term planning process such as the Soft Path’s backcasting approach is an indispensable component of integrated water protection.
D. Governments at all levels, as well as the Watershed Advisory Committees, should look to water conservation and efficiency as the primary means by which to provide for future water needs. Governments should set conservation targets, move forward with concrete actions for meeting those targets (incentives for low-flow toilets, education on yard watering, higher-density development, etc.), and monitor their successes against ambitious timelines. Urban municipalities and citizens should consider challenging themselves to meet the target of “no net increase” in water use. Municipal governments should be given the ability to impose water conservation and efficiency requirements on all users and to restrict water use when necessary. Finally, freshwater use in energy development will probably need to be significantly reduced.
6. Respecting ecosystem integrity, minimizing impacts and interventions
A. Ecosystems have evolved in conjunction with their water supplies. Dams, diversions, inter-basin transfers, and bulk water exports dramatically alter the amount of water in natural ecosystems as well as the flow and function of that water and the mix of species within it. A commitment to prioritize ecosystem needs for water and to maintain the health and integrity of watershed ecosystems strongly suggests the need to minimize interventions in natural water flows and watersheds—to find alternatives to dams, diversions, inter-basin transfers, and other disruptions to the fabric of those ecosystems.
B. New ways of managing water can provide alternatives to mega-project dams and diversions that seek to re-plumb watersheds to boost water supplies. The following points illustrate these alternatives.
(a) To meet citizens’ electricity needs, conservation, improved energy efficiency, and smaller-scale renewable energy can provide alternatives to large-scale hydro-electric dams.
(b) For irrigation, alternatives to large dams include fully utilizing the capacity of existing infrastructure, choosing different crops and livestock or different production methods, limited offstream storage, water-use efficiency, and research into water use within food production ecosystems.
(c) To secure water supplies for communities, alternatives to dams and diversions include conservation, using modified weir-type structures to boost and stabilize water levels (building barriers and “rapids” that increase water depth near city intakes but do not block fish movement or significantly change water flow or quality), reducing leakage and losses within the supply system, alternative land use planning, rainwater collection for lawn watering, better-managing releases from upstream dams and water use within the watershed, and, possibly, offstream storage1—though this alternative may require careful and critical study. In many cases, these alternatives are significantly more affordable than
the construction of multi-billion dollar dams and diversions.
7. Water as a human right, and water pricing
A. Water is too essential—to human health, to ecosystems, and to our society and economy—to be allocated by ability to pay. There is a compelling argument that water for basic human needs (i.e. 60 to 80 litres per day per person: Health Canada) is a human right.1
While offstream storage is a good alternative for securing water supplies for communities and households, large-scale offstream storage for irrigation may create significant problems. Though cities would require
relatively modest diversions from river flows and would eventually return that water, irrigation requires much greater volumes. Diverting large volumes of water to offstream storage has the potential to reduce river lows.
B. Based on the preceding, it would follow that water must be maintained as a public good and a public trust, and that collective ownership, equitable access, and democratic control should be maximized within a not-for-profit distribution system. Water must not be commodified, used as a trade good, or exported.
C. Without violating the preceding, however, there seems also to be a competing consideration: water pricing can be a tool to drive conservation and to make “cost effective” many water efficiency measures.
D. To reconcile the idea that water is a human right with the idea that water pricing can serve an important public purpose, water for household use should be priced such that a base allocation for a family is very affordable, but that water prices increase significantly for water use above that base level. Such a pricing gradient should be designed such that households using significantly more water than average face a significant cost and, thus, encounter a significant incentive to conserve.
E. Similarly, water prices for industrial and commercial users should rise as usage rises in order to spur water conservation, recycling, and the search for alternatives to water use. Such pricing will also send a signal to water-intensive industrial development and will help direct economic growth in a direction appropriate to the dry, southern part of our province. It is entirely legitimate to set one price for household water use and another, higher price for commercial use. The converse—having households subsidize commercial users—is clearly illegitimate.
F. Water charges can be used to fund part of the cost of Source Water Protection; this so-called “full-cost pricing” is being considered in Ontario and elsewhere. Under full-cost pricing water is priced so as to cover some of the costs of protecting watersheds and their natural purification services (i.e. under full-cost pricing, water users pay to maintain all filters and purification equipment—those in municipal treatment plants and those in nature).
G. Finally, in addition to funding Source Water Protection through water charges, we must also use the “the polluter pays” approach: any entity that degrades water supplies in the normal course of operations must be required to pay.
Conclusion
Worldwide, the protection and management of water is emerging as a critical issue. Much of southern Saskatchewan is semi-arid; most of us live in a dry place and rely on water that flows in from far away. Northern citizens and ecosystems face no-lessdaunting challenges. Climate change will make water protection and management both more uncertain and more critical. It is imperative that we marshal our best thinking, formulate our most ambitious goals, and maximize our resources to create an integrated plan for protecting and managing Saskatchewan water.
Citizens must provide leadership on this issue. We trust that this Statement of Expectations can provide valuable guidance to provincial and local governments as they struggle to devise policies that protect and enhance water quality, human health, the environment, and our social and economic systems.
http://www.environmentalsociety.ca/issu ... tement.pdf
Preface
Citizens and organizations concerned about water quality, water governance, environmental protection, sustainability, and human health wish to provide guidance to Saskatchewan’s provincial and municipal governments. Thus, we are collectively drafting this Statement of Expectations. The intent is that once the Statement is complete, numerous organizations will sign on in support and then present it to government as a blueprint for progressive water policies in this province, and across the prairie watersheds we share with Alberta and Manitoba.
This “discussion version” of the Statement of Expectations is a first, changeable outline—a framework onto which we can add details and entire sections. The headings and statements below are preliminary—to provoke and focus discussions.
Introduction: An integrated, holistic approach to water protection
A. Saskatchewan needs a holistic water management system in which all aspects of water protection, planning, monitoring, and governance are integrated; and in which water management and protection are, in turn, incorporated into other planning and regulatory structures: urban development, land-use planning, agricultural policy, environmental protection, energy policy, etc. All governments and agencies must co-operate and collaborate to ensure effective protection.
B. Because of the primacy of water—to human health, ecosystem function, and our society and economy—the protection of water quality and quantity must be a first priority. Where policies intersect and overlap (and sometimes conflict), water protection measures, and other key environmental and human health protections, must supersede other policies and legislation.
C. An integrated and holistic methodology would include several approaches to water management, protection, and governance, including:
(i) Source Water Protection (as part of multi-barrier protection for drinking water quality and human health);
(ii) Watershed-based planning;
(iii) Prioritizing ecosystem needs for water;
(iv) Expanded and integrated water monitoring;
(v) Water conservation;
(vi) A commitment to minimize interventions in natural water flows and
watersheds (pursuing alternatives to dams, diversions, etc.);
(vii) Maintaining water as a public good and a public trust and maximizing
collective ownership, equitable access, and democratic control.
1. Source Water Protection
A. Saskatchewan, like many other jurisdictions, has adopted the “multi-barrier” approach to protecting drinking water quality and, thus, human health. The three barriers most often cited are:
(i) Source Water Protection—keeping water clean and abundant by preventing contamination and by fostering the water purification actions of healthy, functioning watershed ecosystems;
(ii) Making water safe—effective water treatment to remove any remaining impurities; and
(iii) Proving it’s safe—testing and monitoring to ensure safety and swift corrective action if contaminants enter the drinking water supply.
B. Source Water Protection means protecting the watersheds, forests, riparian zones, rivers, lakes, and wetlands that replenish and purify our ground- and surfacewater supplies. It is less expensive to keep water clean than to clean it.
C. The watershed landscape can function to purify water, and it can be the source of toxins and contaminants. In the southern part of the province, that watershed landscape is largely agricultural. Thus, for many Saskatchewan citizens and communities, Source Water Protection means paying careful attention to agricultural practices, and to improving those practices if they pose a threat to water quality or quantity. In northern Saskatchewan, mining and forestry have large impacts on the watershed landscape. Protecting these watersheds will require large improvements in the way that we protect and manage forests, handle mine wastes, plan roads and other access, and generally deal with sensitive northern ecosystems.
D. Governments at all levels must work to make effective Source Water Protection a reality. Saskatchewan governments must then work with governments in other provinces to implement effective Source Water Protection measures up and down our shared watersheds. In addition, the provincial government must work with the federal government where jurisdictions overlap and where First Nations rights are involved.
E. Governments must integrate Source Water Protection into all policy and
planning processes. Where priorities and policies conflict, however, water
protection measures—and other key environmental and human health protections—must supersede other policies, legislation, regulations, and economic development initiatives.
F. In pursuing Source Water Protection as part of a multi-barrier approach to drinking water safety, our provincial and local governments must work to ensure equal protection for all citizens—rural and urban, northern and southern. As the government’s Safe Drinking Water Strategy says: “Everyone in Saskatchewan needs a good supply of safe, clean drinking water.” [Emphasis added]
Wetlands conservation - Wetlands are critical ecosystems; they play a vital role in ground-water recharge and surfacewater purification. Many human activities—agriculture, forestry, urban development, roadbuilding, etc.—are reducing the number and area of wetlands. Any credible commitment to Source Water Protection and a multi-barrier approach to drinking water safety must include effective action to stop the loss of wetlands.
2. Watershed-based planning
A. Watershed-based planning recognizes the inherent connectivity between and among surface- and ground-water systems, between water bodies and their surrounding watershed ecosystems, and between ecosystems and human societies and economies. An integrated, holistic approach to water protection, management, monitoring, and governance is impossible without watershed-based planning.
B. The provincial government has committed to watershed-based planning. To give effect to its commitment, the government and its Saskatchewan Watershed Authority (SWA) have set up several Watershed Advisory Committees (WACs) charged with drafting objectives and action plans for Source Water Protection within their watersheds. [These Plans often go beyond actual “Source Water Protection” (i.e.
drinking water protection) and deal with diverse watershed protection measures.]
C. Citizens are pleased by provincial and local government actions to facilitate watershed-based planning. The current process, however, requires strengthening if it is to fully protect watershed ecosystems and human health. Necessary improvements to the watershed-based planning process include:
(i) The Saskatchewan government, in consultation with citizens and experts, needs to develop overarching principles and priorities to guide WACs toward ambitious outcomes that fully protect human health and watershed integrity;
(ii) The WACs need to develop watershed-appropriate plans based on those guiding principles and priorities in order that watershed protection across the province is uniformly effective and fully integrated;
(iii) WACs require additional resources (funding, staff, and access to
independent expert opinion) to ensure that their recommendations are based on the best possible data and understanding of their watersheds and the larger regions in which their watersheds are located;
(iv) The government should re-examine the composition of WACs to ensure broad participation in (and democratic control of) these Committees and the watershed-based planning processes; the government must remove barriers to participation—especially for First Nations, rural, and northern citizens;
(v) All players—provincial and local governments, SWA, and the WACs—need to ensure that Source Water Protection is fully integrated into other planning and policy areas (e.g. agriculture, energy, cities, and highways);
(vi) Governments must commit to implementing WAC recommendations where those recommendations are consistent with the goals and directions set down by policymakers and citizens (see point i, above) and governments need to back up their commitments with adequate funding; and
(vii) The provincial government should require watershed-based plans for all Saskatchewan watersheds and aquifers.
3. Prioritizing ecosystem needs for water
A. Over the long term, humans cannot prosper by overtaxing and degrading the natural ecosystems that underpin our societies and economies. Maintaining sufficient water within ecosystems and the integrity and resilience of ecosystem processes must be primary and central considerations at all levels of decision making, up and down the watershed. Ecosystems must be recognized as legitimate users of water. Water should be allocated for ecosystems and basic human needs first, and only after those ecosystem and basic human needs are fully met should any remainder be allocated.
B. To give concrete form to this commitment to respect ecosystem needs for water (also called “in-stream flows”) governments and co-operating agencies need to make additional efforts to measure and monitor water flows within ecosystems, to fully develop the science that can help us to determine ecosystem needs, and to understand the connections between and among water-bodies and their ecosystems.
4. Expanded and integrated water monitoring and measurement;
A. A holistic and integrated water protection and management system must rest atop effective and detailed water monitoring. We need detailed knowledge of:
(i) water quality and water quantity;
(ii) ecosystem needs for water;
(iii) human activities in the watershed landscape;
(iv) seasonal and extreme-weather impacts on water quality and quantity;
(v) the health and numbers of aquatic animals and insects;
(vi) medium- and long-term trends and drivers (especially climate change
impacts on watersheds and water quantity and quality);
(vii) existing and potential water quality “hot spots” and significant pointsource contamination sites;
(viii) the interaction and cumulative effects of contaminants;
(ix) emerging threats, such as pharmaceuticals; and
(x) the locations where gaps exists in our knowledge and data.
B. In addition, our water monitoring and protection efforts must respect and integrate First Nations peoples’ traditional knowledge of their watershed ecosystems.
C. The provincial government—working with its Departments and Agencies and consulting with the citizens and scientists—must create an integrated water monitoring and assessment system that measures all significant water parameters and effectively integrates and synthesizes these measurements to give us a clear picture of watershed health and human impacts.
D. In addition to measurements and data, we need benchmarks and thresholds—the creation of which will challenge us to integrate our best science into broadly-based democratic decision making processes. This challenge must be fully understood: science alone cannot set thresholds for acceptable effects or determine acceptable tradeoffs. For example, tarsands development, pulp mills, large livestock operations, coal-fired electricity generation, irrigation water withdrawals, crop production, and a host of other human activities all have adverse impacts on watershed ecosystems. While science can help us make decisions based on data,
many decisions come down to values and democratic decision making (e.g. How much wetland area do we need? How wide do riverside riparian buffers need to be?) Answering such questions requires our best science embedded within broadbased democratic and forward-looking decision making structures.
E. Further, data and information gathering and democratic decision-making must be fully integrated with the various watershed Source Water Protection Plans created by the Watershed Advisory Committees.
5. Conservation, demand side management, and the Soft Path for Water
A. Ecosystems evolved in conjunction with their water supplies. While humans will continue to take water from ecosystems, it should be with the understanding that these systems contain no “surplus” water. Thus, minimizing human withdrawals and maximizing water efficiency and productivity must be primary aims.
B. In the “Soft Path for Water,” water conservation and efficiency are taken a step further, and citizens and governments are challenged to re-imagine how we can obtain the benefits we now receive from water—attractive yards, sanitation, energy and industrial production, etc.—by using less water, or by using alternatives to water.
The Soft Path is one essential tool in helping us move beyond manipulating and overtaxing our watersheds to managing human activity within those watersheds.
C. The Soft Path strategy also challenges policymakers and water managers to look ahead 25 or 50 years, to understand changes and trends, to choose a future that provides for both human and ecosystem needs, and then to “backcast” a set of steps that will move us to that preferred future. Whereas watershed-based planning expands the planning horizon geographically—away from the water’s edge and into the surrounding ecosystem; the Soft Path’s backcasting approach broadens the planning horizon temporally—focusing us on a desired future. A long term planning process such as the Soft Path’s backcasting approach is an indispensable component of integrated water protection.
D. Governments at all levels, as well as the Watershed Advisory Committees, should look to water conservation and efficiency as the primary means by which to provide for future water needs. Governments should set conservation targets, move forward with concrete actions for meeting those targets (incentives for low-flow toilets, education on yard watering, higher-density development, etc.), and monitor their successes against ambitious timelines. Urban municipalities and citizens should consider challenging themselves to meet the target of “no net increase” in water use. Municipal governments should be given the ability to impose water conservation and efficiency requirements on all users and to restrict water use when necessary. Finally, freshwater use in energy development will probably need to be significantly reduced.
6. Respecting ecosystem integrity, minimizing impacts and interventions
A. Ecosystems have evolved in conjunction with their water supplies. Dams, diversions, inter-basin transfers, and bulk water exports dramatically alter the amount of water in natural ecosystems as well as the flow and function of that water and the mix of species within it. A commitment to prioritize ecosystem needs for water and to maintain the health and integrity of watershed ecosystems strongly suggests the need to minimize interventions in natural water flows and watersheds—to find alternatives to dams, diversions, inter-basin transfers, and other disruptions to the fabric of those ecosystems.
B. New ways of managing water can provide alternatives to mega-project dams and diversions that seek to re-plumb watersheds to boost water supplies. The following points illustrate these alternatives.
(a) To meet citizens’ electricity needs, conservation, improved energy efficiency, and smaller-scale renewable energy can provide alternatives to large-scale hydro-electric dams.
(b) For irrigation, alternatives to large dams include fully utilizing the capacity of existing infrastructure, choosing different crops and livestock or different production methods, limited offstream storage, water-use efficiency, and research into water use within food production ecosystems.
(c) To secure water supplies for communities, alternatives to dams and diversions include conservation, using modified weir-type structures to boost and stabilize water levels (building barriers and “rapids” that increase water depth near city intakes but do not block fish movement or significantly change water flow or quality), reducing leakage and losses within the supply system, alternative land use planning, rainwater collection for lawn watering, better-managing releases from upstream dams and water use within the watershed, and, possibly, offstream storage1—though this alternative may require careful and critical study. In many cases, these alternatives are significantly more affordable than
the construction of multi-billion dollar dams and diversions.
7. Water as a human right, and water pricing
A. Water is too essential—to human health, to ecosystems, and to our society and economy—to be allocated by ability to pay. There is a compelling argument that water for basic human needs (i.e. 60 to 80 litres per day per person: Health Canada) is a human right.1
While offstream storage is a good alternative for securing water supplies for communities and households, large-scale offstream storage for irrigation may create significant problems. Though cities would require
relatively modest diversions from river flows and would eventually return that water, irrigation requires much greater volumes. Diverting large volumes of water to offstream storage has the potential to reduce river lows.
B. Based on the preceding, it would follow that water must be maintained as a public good and a public trust, and that collective ownership, equitable access, and democratic control should be maximized within a not-for-profit distribution system. Water must not be commodified, used as a trade good, or exported.
C. Without violating the preceding, however, there seems also to be a competing consideration: water pricing can be a tool to drive conservation and to make “cost effective” many water efficiency measures.
D. To reconcile the idea that water is a human right with the idea that water pricing can serve an important public purpose, water for household use should be priced such that a base allocation for a family is very affordable, but that water prices increase significantly for water use above that base level. Such a pricing gradient should be designed such that households using significantly more water than average face a significant cost and, thus, encounter a significant incentive to conserve.
E. Similarly, water prices for industrial and commercial users should rise as usage rises in order to spur water conservation, recycling, and the search for alternatives to water use. Such pricing will also send a signal to water-intensive industrial development and will help direct economic growth in a direction appropriate to the dry, southern part of our province. It is entirely legitimate to set one price for household water use and another, higher price for commercial use. The converse—having households subsidize commercial users—is clearly illegitimate.
F. Water charges can be used to fund part of the cost of Source Water Protection; this so-called “full-cost pricing” is being considered in Ontario and elsewhere. Under full-cost pricing water is priced so as to cover some of the costs of protecting watersheds and their natural purification services (i.e. under full-cost pricing, water users pay to maintain all filters and purification equipment—those in municipal treatment plants and those in nature).
G. Finally, in addition to funding Source Water Protection through water charges, we must also use the “the polluter pays” approach: any entity that degrades water supplies in the normal course of operations must be required to pay.
Conclusion
Worldwide, the protection and management of water is emerging as a critical issue. Much of southern Saskatchewan is semi-arid; most of us live in a dry place and rely on water that flows in from far away. Northern citizens and ecosystems face no-lessdaunting challenges. Climate change will make water protection and management both more uncertain and more critical. It is imperative that we marshal our best thinking, formulate our most ambitious goals, and maximize our resources to create an integrated plan for protecting and managing Saskatchewan water.
Citizens must provide leadership on this issue. We trust that this Statement of Expectations can provide valuable guidance to provincial and local governments as they struggle to devise policies that protect and enhance water quality, human health, the environment, and our social and economic systems.