Across Alberta, communities and experts are concerned about the potential for worsening drought conditions this year, and an increased frequency and severity of droughts in the future due to climate change.
While the same licensing system applies across the province, each region, watershed and river basin has its own unique characteristics that produce different water allocation profiles.
Digging into licence data from the provincial government helps paint a clearer picture of how water is allocated and used across Alberta.
The Alberta Flow Estimation Tool for Ungauged Watersheds displays detailed information about water licences within set search parameters.
This story is based on two provincewide data sets exported from that tool by CBC News — one for surface water, including lakes and rivers, and one for groundwater.
Each entry includes the name of the licence holder and their priority number, which is based on the date of issuance and determines their ranking relative to other users in times of water shortage.
There is also detailed information about the licence itself, including maximums for total water diverted and total water consumed.
Consumed water is water that is taken and not returned. Some water users, such as municipalities, divert large amounts of water. However, because much of that water is later treated and returned to the same water body, the consumptive use is relatively low.
The data also details the major and minor river basin of each licence, as well as the broad and specific categories of water use.
For example, irrigation, fish farms and drinking water for livestock all fall under the category of agriculture.
What the data doesn’t show
Importantly, the data is not a representation of how much water is actually being used.
Rather, the licence volumes and consumption represent the maximum amount of water that can be diverted or consumed under that licence.
However, the data still paints an informative picture of how water is allocated across Alberta.
Surface water represents the vast majority of all water allocated in the province, with groundwater accounting for less than five per cent of the total volume.
The provincewide licence data shows what you might expect for the top categories of consumption: agriculture (68 per cent), industrial (22 per cent) and municipal (7 per cent).
But those figures simplify what is a highly varied regional story.
Most of Alberta’s water is in the northern half of the province, while most of its population and water needs are in the southern half.
“This really isn’t exclusive to Alberta,” says Tricia Stadnyk, a professor and Canada Research Chair in hydrologic modelling with the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering.
“This is kind of the case all over Canada where we have about 20 per cent of the water supply that exists within Canada within about 200 kilometres of the Canada-U.S. border, but about 80 per cent of the Canadian population lives in that area.”
The Bow and Oldman rivers in southern Alberta rank at the top in terms consumptive use — that is, the amount of water allocated to be removed and not returned. Each river on its own far outstrips any northern basin on that metric.
But in terms of size, the Bow and Oldman combined have less than 15 per cent of the mean annual discharge of the Peace River in the north.
By far the largest allocation of water in southern Alberta is for irrigation, accounting for the bulk of surface water licence volume in the Milk (85 per cent), Bow (90 per cent) and Oldman (92 per cent) river basins.
Heading up the map, the picture quickly changes. The North Saskatchewan River basin, which serves the Edmonton area, isn’t dominated by any one category — the largest is power generation at 30 per cent, followed by oil and gas production at 25 per cent.
In the north, oil and gas dominates, accounting for 39 per cent of surface water allocated for consumption in the Peace basin, and 92 per cent in the Athabasca basin.
Unlike the southernmost river basins, which are considered fully allocated, new water licences are available from the Red Deer River north.
Given the scarcity of water relative to demand in the south, water allocation and drought concerns have often been viewed as not as relevant to northern Alberta. But the provincial government’s water information portal currently shows multiple water shortage advisories for northern areas.
“We can expect to see more of that. You know, in the north we aren’t immune from the lack of snowpack, right?” says Stadnyk, noting that central and northern Alberta’s river basins also originate in the mountains.
“And if that snowpack doesn’t happen, then quite frankly those basins are also in a state of peril.”
Not all water use is equal
Not all kinds of water use are equal. Much depends on what the water is used for, and what happens to it after that use.
For example, while freshwater usage for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a relatively small piece of the overall pie, that water can’t be returned to the water body after use.
Municipalities, on the other hand, use a lot of water, but also return quite a bit. The City of Calgary, for example, the sixth-largest licence holder in the province, is licensed to divert more than 460 million cubic metres of water annually, but 80 per cent of that volume gets returned.
As dugouts go dry and fields thirst for moisture, some ranchers on the Prairies are making tough choices to sell off parts of their livestock to ensure there is enough water for the animals that remain.
There’s also the question of efficient water use. Southern Alberta’s irrigation system was built with open canals, which means that not all of the water diverted for irrigation gets used for growing crops — a sizable amount is lost to evaporation.
“Over the last 20 years in particular, a lot of the older irrigation systems have been replaced by much more efficient systems,” says Evan Davies, a professor with the University of Alberta’s water resources engineering research group.
“What used to be older canal systems have been really well rehabilitated, with a lot of water put into pipelines.”
How much is too much?
Given that Alberta’s water future looks increasingly bleak, are we simply using too much water?
Davies says it’s not a simple question.
“I guess from an environmental perspective, using any water is probably using too much. So if you want to put a constraint on the lower [limit], using any water is problematic. But in reality, of course, as a society we need water.”
Stadnyk has a different view on the question.
“The short answer would be yes, and I base my answer off of the environmentally sustainable needs, or what we call in-stream flow needs, according to the province of Alberta.
“It is not uncommon for us — in periods of even short-term water scarcity like we saw over the last couple years — to dip below the minimum required amount of water in a stream that is needed for fish and aquatic health,” she says.
“So yes, I would say that we’re overusing. And this is no secret; we know that the sum total of the water licences actually exceeds in any given year the total amount of water availability above the in-stream flow needs.
“It’s just that we’ve always had more water in the system. So we haven’t necessarily hit that critical threshold like we’re going to this year.”
‘It’s consumers that hold the power’
Anticipating a year of water scarcity, the provincial government has started to take steps such as holding negotiations with major water users in southern Alberta.
“Those are really good steps,” says Davies. “But I’m wondering what the plan is for not just the next year or two of potential drought, but the droughts that may occur in the 2030s, 2035, all the way up to 2050.”
Stadnyk says Alberta’s current priority system is not well-suited to handle the increased water scarcity that climate change brings — as illustrated by the need for negotiations to avoid enforcing the priority system.
“You’re basically saying that the system is in fact flawed because you have to come to the table to renegotiate,” she says, adding that the current priority system, which originated in the 19th century, does not account for Indigenous communities.
Stadnyk points out that while the “first in time, first in right” priority model is used across western North America, many jurisdictions have tweaked it to include more oversight and legislative control, particularly when there isn’t enough water to go around.
Looking toward the future, both Stadnyk and Davies want to see the province more assertively manage Alberta’s water.
“I guess the most important topic for the province right now is not to get lost in the short-term details, but to think about the longer-term trajectory under population growth, increasing water use and potential climate change,” says Davies.
“We can’t just think about the short term and how we manage this drought. We need to think about how we’re going to manage future droughts as well.”
Stadnyk says it’s up to Albertans to make this issue a priority.
“Even though municipal supply is a very small percentage of the overall pie, ultimately it’s consumers that hold the power, in terms of not only their mentality towards water use and water sustainability and water security, but in applying pressure to the government to actually do something about this longer term to actually look at water as the foundation for our economy and our sustainability as a province.”
