Qu Appelle River Basin Case Study

Canada, like so many other countries in the world continues to deal with many different environmental resource issues. Throughout our history, one of the issues affecting our country has been the treatment of our First Nations people. For the purpose of this paper, the focus will be on the safe water crisis facing Canada’s First Nations communities. The Oxford Dictionary (2016) defines a crisis as a time of great difficulty or danger. The research included will help clarify the reality of the Canada’s First Nations safe water crisis. Despite some improvements over the past few decades, many of our First Nation citizens still lack access to safe and clean water. Our reserves have water that is contaminated, difficult to access or toxic because of outdated and faulty treatment systems. (Klasing, 2016) This safe water crisis is in need of immediate attention. It is Canada’s responsibility to provide the right to clean and safe water for all of its citizens.

Each year, at least 7.8 trillion gallons of water are drawn up from the Ogalla Aquifer to irrigate the crops planted on the High Plains. These cros are the main food sourrce for our entire country. Tragically, irrigation is depleting the aquifer faster than it can replenish itself, and that is the problem. In fact, only the tiniest fraction of the water is ever replaced in the Ogallala Aquifer. If the water were ever fully depleted, the aquifer would need 6,000 years to refill naturally (Zwingle 83). The only way the Ogalla can be replenished is by water seeping down through the layers of soil until it reaches the aquifer. This water comes from the small amount of precipitation in the region, as well as from streams, reservoirs, canals, and irrigation (McGuire and Sharpe).

The State of Colorado has suffered from a water shortage in recent years; a difficult situation which is easily visible when viewing the quickly shortening length of the Colorado River. Lake Mead, for example, is roughly 130 feet lower than it once was, marked by the stained rock which towers above the current water level. “The river has become a perfect symbol of what happens when we ask too much of a limited resource: it disappears. In fact, the Colorado no longer regularly reaches the sea” (Zielinski, 2010). Legislation was implemented early on to address this issue, though the results were (perhaps not surprisingly) rather unanticipated, regarding

Simple everyday things for Canadians to reduce water consumption would to fix leaky faucets, take shorter showers, and turn off the tap when they brush their teeth. Other courses of action for people would be to install toilets that use less water per flush and for the government, they could start to tax people for water usage. Some strategies to farmers would be to use drip irrigation systems, which deliver water directly to the plants roots.

With the Colorado River supplying 43% of all agricultural water consumption and 41% of all Municipal and Industrial water supply in the basin, losing access to this resource entirely for one year would cost $1.434 trillion in combined state GDP [2]. Just a ten percent decline in water availability will reduce combined basin states GDP by $143.4 billion, reduce employment in the area by 1.6 million job-years, and reduce labor income by 87.1billion dollars per year [2]. In addition to the shrinking economic production, the cost of living in the area would also start to increase. The water in the Colorado River provides inexpensive energy for the parts of the lower basin states, the cost of the power has doubled from the initial contracts, and if water levels fall to 1000', the costs could quintuple for customers that are bound to purchase the hydroelectric power until 2067 [8]. While the internal economy of the basin would suffer, the effects would also ripple into the rest of the country. The agricultural Imperial Valley in California, for example, provides two-thirds of the country's vegetables in the winter [9]. Without proper irrigation and water supply, production rates

Living Canada, it is hard to believe what it would be like to not have a virtually unlimited supply of freshwater. In places and areas where freshwater is not that easy to get, such as the drought in California that is so highly talked about, as well as places in Africa who wonder if they will have enough fresh water to last the rest of the week. Being a country of high strength in this resource we have to think if we are going to help some to these countries or not. This piece writing will explain what freshwater really is and whether Canada should export our water to the United States of America and why we should not.

Companies have the technology and the knowledge to divert or sell water in a way that is safe on the environment. Part of the Canadian population has been misled to believe that Canada will not have enough water for its residents if it sells water to the United States. This is a myth. Toronto MP Dennis Mills says, “Many people just don’t understand the issue. They have this idea that the Americans are going to build the biggest pipeline the world has ever seen and drain the Great Lakes dry.” There are many proposed diversion schemes that would have minimal effect on ecology. The water diversion scheme in Manitoba is an example of this. It proposes that an insulated pipeline be stationed at the mouth of the Nelson River just before it empties into Hudson Bay. This scheme would allow the Nelson River to run its full, natural course and only divert 1% of the fresh water that is currently being emptied into Hudson Bay. The Canadian people have being misled that the world is going to run out of water. According to cbc.ca, the amount of water on the earth has stayed the same for the last four billion years, and will not change. Canadians have enough water especially compared to many other countries. According to The Globe and Mail, Maude Barlow has said “…31 countries are facing water stress and scarcity and more than a billion people lack adequate access to clean drinking. By the year 2025, as much as two-thirds of the world’s population will be

For the last century the people of Shoal Lake 40 have solved Winnipeg water problems but they were paid very less for it. During 20th century Winnipeg city was in problem because of not proper access to clean water. With growing population the demand of water was increasing. With not clean drinking water people of Winnipeg suffered from disease like typhoid which leads to increase in death rates. The city and province wanted to get rid of this Winnipeg water problems. In 1913 they set their sights on what a city report depicted as unlimited water supply from Shoal Lake. The city paid $3 an acre for 355 acres of shoal lake land. The work on the construction of Aqueduct was started in 1914 that would carry water from shoal lake to Winnipeg. Due to this people of first nation was cut off from the rest of world and were force to an artificial land. There was not cleaning water access nor there was any economic development .The inn human act by the government created problems in their life where they do not have clean drinking water for

Although, according to my research “Northeastern Canada has, per unit of surface area, more flowing water than almost anywhere else on the globe.” Due to the numerous rivers that flow into the James Bay and Hudson Bay, this can potentially increase economic growth. Since 1963, the plans of this project were started. The mission was to reconstruct the natural waterways into the dams and reservoirs to produce electric power for Canada and New England.

For this paper water structures and infrastructures were selected as focus points because the longer we wait to fix issues with them, the more expensive it will get, in other words, we are in a race against time. Studying the past it is easy to see how water availability made population explode in an area such as Southern California, where savvy marketing and great politics made it happen. Particularly, for Los Angeles and for the purposes of public narrative, Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert does a great job at understanding and identifying the politics and key figures in getting water to Los Angeles. Great hydrologic structures were created using both manpower and water politics. It is important to state that there are connections between water, politics, environment, and geography when analyzing what the biggest problems involving water structures and infrastructures (Reisner.) We must think of water as both a socio-political issue and a natural resource, whose fate is molded by the understanding of its connectivity to itself, man-made structures, geography, environment, and society. The classes taken in this program have taught us ideals that in order to become a great water resource manager, one must master the political and scientific knowledge to make decisions that are prosperous for society and the environment. Furthermore, one must know the United States’ hydrological history in order to gain manipulation upon the system that makes it both thrive and deteriorate.

Due to the location of Canada, they retain a large amount of fresh water, 20% to be exact (Water 2012). However, even with the large percentage only 7% of the renewable freshwater and most of the water (just like in the United States) is not located in desirable areas. The majority of the Canadian population lives along the southern border with the United States and which creates the problem of most of the country 's fresh water is found in the north drainage basins (Water 2012). As this hard to reach water reaches the cities or towns, municipal water supply only accounts for 12% of water use in Canada (Water Uses 2013). The larger user of this finite source come form cooling plants (64%), manufacturing (14%) and agriculture (9%) (Water Uses 2013).

The dust settled as the last vehicle departed the newly established ghost town. What was once a bustling rural community in eastern Colorado, complete with a school and church, and businesses off the main street, has become deserted due to a lack of water. This has become an all too familiar scene in rural communities across Colorado as the increasing demand for water and the dwindling water supply pits water users against one another. The state’s free market style of appropriating water, known as prior appropriation, allows for this highly competitive, and often detrimental situation to persist. As climate change and population growth continue to strain the water supply in Colorado, it will be necessary to adjust the strict prior appropriation

The Red Deer River is a major tributary of the South Saskatchewan. Lake Diefenbaker is Saskatchewan was created as a reservoir when the Gardiner and Qu’Appelle dams were created to slow the river flow. Those dams create 19% of the power generated by SaskPower. While the river flows north through Saskatoon it will join up with the North Saskatchewan River creating the Saskatchewan River. It joins at the Saskatchewan River Forks.

Hey yah I think this is freaking retarted but I have to pass this class. Anyways some things I thought were interesting and kind of cool are that the Mississippi river created most of the Louisiana I didn’t know that a river could do that ya that is like so exciting however it couldn’t have made it if it stayed in one channel. Southern Louisiana exists in its present form because the Mississippi River has jumped here and there within an arc about two hundred miles wide, like a pianist playing with one hand—frequently and radically changing course, surging over the left or the right bank to go off in utterly new directions. (The Control of Nature February 23, 1987 issue Atchafalaya by john McPhee). In other words the river moving in all directions

national identity, but most of the time, they represent the community’s own views. The way