The North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance (NSWA) is set for another year with the same board after it held its annual general meeting on June 15 in Edmonton, at the King’s University College.
Guest speakers included David Hill from the Alberta Water Research Institute and Geoff McFarlane of Clear Water Landcare from Australia, who offered an international take on water management. Around 60 members attended.
It has been almost three months since the NSWA visited the Town of St. Paul to put on a presentation about its discussion paper and to talk about developing an integrated watershed management plan (IWMP) in the area.
The purpose of the IWMP is to find balance between the ecological, social and economical needs of watershed stakeholders. The plan aims to protect and sustain land and water resources of the watershed.
“It’s going to be a plan which we will present to the government to manage and protect our water so we will have water to use 50 to 100 years from now,” said NSWA director Bill Fox.
NSWA proposed its ideas and received feedback from community members through a workbook survey about the IWMP and what it would mean for local residents in St. Paul April 18, during phase one of the IWMP.
Now the NSWA is moving into phase two, which involves further preparing the IWMP by taking into consideration public concerns and then seeking approval to implement the plan from the government.
“Quite a few people have filled out and sent in the survey,” Fox said. “It sounded like they were quite satisfied with our plans.”
The watershed alliance has received a fair amount of responses from the St. Paul area in regards to the workbook and there are still more coming in, Fox said. Response numbers were quite a bit lower closer to the Edmonton area. Although the formal deadline to return the workbook survey has passed, the NSWA would still like to receive additional feedback at any time and these responses will still be taken into consideration in drafting of the final plan.
“Right now the plan is in the process of being re-done now that we have received the feedback and will eventually be sent off to be reviewed by the government,” Fox said. “We are still waiting on some more surveys to come in before we do this, but are hoping to have everything in place by the end of the year.”
Although most local residents support what the NSWA is planning to do, they raised concerns about some of the issues endangering water in the area.
“Some of the feedback that is coming out of the surveys are concerns that oilfield companies are ruining our groundwater supplies, but who knows for sure if this is true or not,” Fox said.
Other concerns included water content and what types of chemicals are present in some of the local water supplies. “It’s pretty complicated, but it could mean the difference between life and death,” Fox said about chemical contents.
During the presentation on April 18, IWMP coordinator Tom Cottrell explained the most important part of the discussion paper included five goals, which are important to the development and success of the IWMP.
The goals included first to maintain or improve water quality in the watershed through regular monitoring, second to maintain or improve water quality in the watershed by planning ahead for possible effects of climate change, third to maintain or improve aquatic ecosystem health by protecting band and shore land, fourth to protect groundwater quality and quantity, and fifth to align water and land use planning at the regional level.
The IWMP will include these goals, as well as take into consideration the concerns brought up by local residents and all those who filled out and returned the workbook surveys, in the final draft of the plan. The NSWA hopes to have phase two of the plan completed by the end of the year and then to move forward to phase three.
Phase three of the plan will include implementation, monitoring and evaluation, which will be a long-term action and will include the public, who may be involved with monitoring results in their areas.
