Member’s Statement – Water Management
Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. March 22 is World Water Day. Alberta is blessed with an abundance of fresh water, and that very abundance has perhaps allowed us to take it for granted. The rapid growth of our population and industries has placed serious strains on the supply and cleanliness of Alberta’s most precious resource. If we don’t figure out how to properly manage our water supply and quickly, Alberta’s prosperity and quality of life could be put at risk.
In the recent past we’ve seen how water from communities such as Red Deer was very nearly diverted to feed the proposed megamall and horse-racing track at Balzac. We’ve seen how the government’s policy of allowing industry to self-report and self-monitor its emissions has led to contamination of the Athabasca River basin. We’ve seen toxic tailings ponds and dead birds blackening Alberta’s image. There’s a moratorium on new allocations from the South Saskatchewan River basin, one of the largest in the province, because of past mismanagement. We’ve seen the failure of the water for life strategy, which is a good strategy but useless without the funding to make it work. We all need to remember that someone lives downstream. Watch what you dump because water moves, and it carries contaminants right along with it right into the mouths of Albertans.
We have a lot of work to do. We need to map our surface and groundwater resources. We can’t make good decisions until we know where all of our water is located and how much of it there is. If we want to protect our water for our future generations, if we want to ensure that our children and grandchildren have access to clean water, then we had better start getting serious about how we manage it. We cannot survive without water. Communities cannot thrive without it. Crops cannot be grown without it. Industry cannot prosper without it.
This administration, this steward of our water supply, must start to make better management decisions, ones that preserve and protect our water supply for all citizens.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
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