WC134 JanFeb 2024 - Magazine - Page 32
GROUNDWATER
Leveling the playing field
Ontario Water Works Association (OWWA) executive director
Michele Grenier, has spent her career wrestling with practical
issues of water management and sees clear potential benefits in
Canada1Water as a decision-support tool.
“Since I started in the water business, I’ve been trying to find
a better way of projecting climate patterns and impacts so we can
factor climate change into infrastructure design,” Grenier says.
“Understanding surface water and groundwater conditions is
immensely helpful. Canada1Water will bring a whole new level
of accuracy to our projections.”
The model will also give communities of different sizes and
different means access to the same quality and scope of information to guide their planning, according to Hazen Russell,
Canada1Water co-lead and scientist with the Geological Survey
of Canada Groundwater Geoscience Program.
“For the most part, only the biggest agencies have people inhouse who can understand complex hydrogeological models or
the budgets to pay consultants to interpret them,” Russell says.
“Canada1Water gives municipalities access to the same model
outputs wherever they’re located and whatever their means. And
anyone with the right skills can work directly with the datasets.”
Informing long-term decisions
Canada1Water is poised to facilitate integrated, comprehensive,
and extended water planning at any scale across the country,
including in rural and northern communities that are often
overlooked. The finished model will span three time periods: a
historical range from 1980–2020 and two future 15-year blocks,
from 2045–2060 and from 2085–2100. While most public policy
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WATER C AN ADA • JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2024
decisions tend to have a horizon of 10 years or less, the Canada1
Water projections will support much farther-reaching plans.
At the same time, the model transcends geopolitical boundaries, creating new opportunities for collective, collaborative
decision-making. Since most jurisdictions are typically smaller
than the watersheds they depend on, few have a complete picture
of overall conditions and dependencies.
“With Canada1Water, you can scale up to the watershed level to
plan water-taking, effluent and discharge,” says Frey. “It will allow
for inter-community master planning at the watershed level.”
The kinds of insights generated by the Canada1Water simulation could also help water authorities better answer questions
from the public. Grenier mentions the Walkerton, Ontario E.
coli contamination of 2000, which caused seven deaths and
thousands of illnesses.
“We still get asked if a Walkerton situation could happen
again,” Grenier says. “We can’t say no for certain because we
don’t fully understand the surface water–soil–groundwater
interactions. While Canada1Water can’t predict a specific event,
it’s going to improve our understanding of seasonal changes
and interactions. With that perspective, we could easily ask a
hydrogeologist to look at individual wells and assess the interconnections and the risks.”
Russell sees Canada1Water as a tool with an almost unlimited
range of uses. “The simulation and datasets have value for water
agencies, policymakers, industrial decisionmakers, researchers
and more. I think this will help communities answer—and potentially ask—questions they’ve never been able to before.”
For more information about Canada1Water, visit the project
website at www.canada1water.ca.
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
Canada1Water
The Canada1Water model covers seven distinct
drainage basins (outlined in white). The underlying
datasets and standardized groundwater–surface
water metrics will be available for all of Canada.
