Feature Articles
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Climate Change and the Elbow River
by Ann Sullivan
In early November 2019, more than 11,000 scientists from around the world declared that the Earth is in the midst of a climate crisis. The scientists were not the first to make the statement. In June of this year, Canadian politicians also passed a motion to declare a climate emergency, noting that Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet.
David Sauchyn, director of the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative (PARC) at the University of Regina, is perhaps more aware than most of the effects of climate change on our country and planet. Sauchyn, a professor of geography and environmental studies, has been studying climate change for 40 years. Starting in the 1990s, he became aware that there was “a whole social and political element” to climate change. “It’s really hard these days to separate the science and the reaction people have to it,” he said.
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West Bragg Creek Trails Connect Visitors and Nature
By Ann Sullivan
On a beautiful day in the southern Alberta foothills, you can find the trails in West Bragg Creek by following a steady stream of vehicles to the trailhead. Some people make their way by foot or bike via the newly built Great Trail, which parallels the West Bragg Creek Road and Range Road 54. Whichever way you choose to access the area, you’ll find a vast network of multi-use, non-motorized trails less than an hour from Calgary.
These days, a paved road connects the hamlet of Bragg Creek to the trailhead parking lot about 10 kilometres away. But the West Bragg Creek trails, in the heart of the Elbow River watershed, were not always so well known or well used. What began as a loose network of horse and cart trails, seismic cut-lines, mining roads and unofficial recreational trails has developed in the past 10 years into 152 kilometres of all-season trails.
Read more: West Bragg Creek Trails Connect Visitors and Nature
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Protecting Groundwater is Key to Elbow River Health
The Elbow River may be the only river in the world whose major end use is drinking water. And although it supplies water to about half the population of Calgary and one in six Albertans, it’s not a big river, just one-tenth the size of the Bow. Cathy Ryan, a professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Calgary, makes these points to illustrate how important it is to protect the Elbow and its aquifer. Since the aquifer is directly hydraulically connected to the river, Ryan said, any river activities can directly affect water quality. Ryan is concerned that the Elbow is not being adequately protected because it’s “a casualty to the fact that people want to live close to rivers.”
Much of the flow in the Elbow River moves through the aquifer to the river, either after percolating down through the aquifer itself or through rocks, cracks and soil before flowing into the aquifer and then the open-stream river. Surface water, which comes directly from rain and snowmelt, makes up a much smaller percentage of water in the Elbow.
Read more: Protecting Groundwater is Key to Elbow River Health
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The Need for Wetlands Protection
By Ann Sullivan
Wetlands are a critical part of a healthy environment. They moderate the effects of floods and droughts, store and filter water, provide habitat for fish, wildlife and plants, and help to sustain biodiversity. However, despite the integral role they play in the environment, wetlands are still viewed by some as just another marshy piece of land that needs filling in to be of real use.
Photo by Flora Giesbrecht
Judy Stewart, a Cochrane resident and longtime wetlands and water advocate, would like to see a change in people’s attitudes toward these underappreciated areas. “[Wetlands] perform so many different functions that we need because of climate change,” Stewart says, “but no one has been able to put a dollar value on that.”
In 2013, the Government of Alberta introduced a new wetland policy to replace two interim policies from 1993. Stewart said she was encouraged by initial recommendations for the new policy, but she was not pleased with the final result. “What they put together is quite watered down,” she said of the current wetland policy. “I was quite disappointed,” she added. “We waited a long time for it.”
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Water Rites Invites Us to Consider Different Perspectives on Water
By Ann Sullivan
One of the most striking themes in Water Rites: Reimagining Water in the West is the idea that all water issues are connected, and that water connects and affects all
forms of life. As editor Jim Ellis writes in the book’s introduction, “Water visibly reminds us of our connections, as well as our responsibility to those that share the same watershed.”
The book Water Rites came about after the 2017 Annual Community Seminar hosted by the Calgary Institute for the Humanities (CIH), of which Ellis is director. The CIH, formed in 1976, is Canada’s oldest humanities institute. Each year it hosts a seminar on an issue of importance to Calgary and the wider community, and in 2017 the seminar topic was “Water in the West: Rights of Water/Rights to Water.” Three guests, Michelle Daigle, David Laidlaw and Adrian Parr, spoke at the event, and some of their opening remarks are included in Water Rites along with contributions from, among others, artists, art critics, First Nations groups and non-profit associations such as the Elbow River Watershed Partnership.
The book is a beautiful collection of essays and artwork, curated in a way that invites readers to think more deeply about issues around water, for example, the overallocation and insufficient flow in Alberta’s rivers; the rights of everyone to clean water; but also the beauty of water in our everyday lives, such as at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers in downtown Calgary.
Read more: Water Rites Invites Us to Consider Different Perspectives on Water
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