WC136 MayJune 2024 - Magazine - Page 30
AQUIFERS
AQUIFERS
30
USAGE_CAT
PURPOSE
PER CENT
Agriculture
Agricultural
1.8%
Agriculture
Irrigation
44.3%
Commercial
Commercial
7.1%
Commercial
Cooling
16.5%
Industry
Oil and Gas
9.6%
Industry
Drilling/Fracturing
0.2%
Industry
Injection
1.6%
Municipal
Municipal
12.5%
Other
Recreation
Other
Manitoba
A spokesperson for the provincial government explained how the
province collects water usage data and what information it gathers.
“In Manitoba, water uses are licensed on a site-specific basis,
based on sustainable limits of the specific water resource. Manitoba’s licensing system is similar to other western provinces, and
works to protect the interests of licensees, domestic users, the
general public, and the environment.
The government did provide a breakdown by sector. In this case,
the statistics were compiled using information from January 2022.
SECTOR
PER CENT OF
LICENSED ALLOCATED VOLUME
0.23%
Irrigation
35%
Habitat
0.75%
Municipal
26%
Other
Fish/Wildlife
1.1%
Industrial
23%
Other
Water Mgmt.
3.6%
Other Uses
12%
Other
Other
0.67%
Agricultural
4%
WATER C AN ADA • M AY/JUNE 2024
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
Getty Images
Alberta
Ryan Fournier, press secretary to Minister of Environment
and Protected Areas of Alberta, Rebecca Schulz, answered
Water Canada’s questions about what water usage data is
available from the province and explained that there are three
ways for the public to view information on Alberta’s water
licences, all starting from the same website: the Alberta Water
Licence Viewer.
He also provided a breakdown of usage by sector. In 2023,
the licence holders in the province had permission to use
9,732,527,000 cubic metres of water, with 9,363,191 cubic
metres of that total being surface water and 369,376,000
cubic metres of ground water.
Saskatchewan
In Saskatchewan, it’s the Water Security Agency that is in charge
of assigning water usage licences and, as Sean Osmar, manager of
communications explained, the WSA “does collect actual usage
data from approximately 1,250 clients on about 2,600 individual
projects of all sizes. We publish aggregate community usage
annually on the WSA web site.”
Additionally, he said the “WSA maintains usage data centrally
but does not publish any other usage data or release actual water
usage data by client/project for non-municipal projects, as doing
so would violate Freedom of Information and Protection of
Privacy Act regulations.”
When asked by Water Canada, the WSA did supply 2022’s
usage data by sector. As might be suspected, farming—specifically irrigation—was responsible for the highest volume of water
(229,029 cubic decametres) and ranked highest as a single category when it comes to percentage of total water used in the province
(42 per cent). Other agricultural uses totalled 13,131 cubic decametres. Municipal use came in at 145,257 cubic decametres.
Industrial usages ate up just over one quarter of all the water used
in the province. In that category, oil and gas production accounted
for 10 per cent or 56.360 cubic decametres. Mining was responsible
for just a hair under 10 per cent of total water usage (9.9 per cent),
but the WSA differentiates between potash mining, which used
38,014 cubic decametres (seven per cent), uranium mining which
used 1,904 cubic decametres and other types of mining which came
in at 2.6 per cent with 14,263 cubic decametres used.
