Energize Alberta Features

Alberta may have wealth of untapped water resources, study says

There is far more groundwater to be tapped in Alberta than was ever previously believed. How much? According to a consultant involved in a thorough study of the province's water resources, there could be enough to ease concerns about long-term water supplies, especially in the province's north.

Jon Fennell, head hydrogeologist and director of water resources for Canada with engineering consulting firm WorleyParsons Ltd., says work his firm is doing for provincially funded research think tank Alberta Innovates—Energy and Environment Solutions leads him to believe Alberta's groundwater potential has barely been tapped.

"It's absurd that we're fighting over scraps," says Fennell, who was project manager of an ongoing study of all of Alberta's water resources for Alberta Innovates. "Only 310 million cubic metres a year of groundwater is allocated in Alberta and more than 9.8 billion cubic metres of surface water. Groundwater is the largest source of water in Alberta and it's used the least."

Fennell said there could be "billions, if not trillions" of cubic metres of groundwater available in the province—much of it non-saline, which means it would need very little, if any, treatment.

The work is part of the two-year first phase of a study that Alberta Innovates spent $350,000 on. David Hill, executive director of water resources for that agency, says he is seeking $800,000 for follow-up work that could take three to five years and would provide the most comprehensive assessment of the province's water resources ever attempted. It is a part of the province's Water for Life strategy, which was launched in 2003 with the aim of preserving Alberta's drinking-water quality, maintaining healthy aquatic ecosystems and ensuring reliable water supplies for the future.

Fennell, a groundwater expert, says one of the flaws in the Water for Life strategy—and he is a supporter—is that nobody has ever done an inventory of all of the province's water resources.

It's not as if data on surface and groundwater is not collected. The provincial government, in cooperation with Ottawa, has a network of 525 recording stations that measure stream flow, lake levels and sediment data. Alberta Environment and Water also operates 124 short-term stream flow stations and 250 short-term lake level stations.

Ambient water quality is monitored monthly at 13 river and four lake sites as well, to establish long-term trends.

In addition, a network of 117 climate stations is operated by the federal and provincial governments, which are essential for estimating spring runoff from the mountains—the source of most of Alberta's surface water.

There are also 340 groundwater observation wells province-wide to monitor water levels and quality in aquifers with the potential to be used for water supply purposes. In addition, groundwater is monitored in the vicinity of reservoirs, rivers, lakes, dams and oilsands projects.

It was largely data gathered from these sites that were used to conduct the study Fennell helped coordinate.

Fennell isn't suggesting the province could rely totally on groundwater, but it could tap that source much more than it currently does.

In particular, he says there is the potential to access large volumes of non-saline groundwater in northern Alberta, where the oil and gas industry is being discouraged from doing so.

Instead, the industry must drill much deeper to access saline water, often at considerable cost. That water must also be treated to make it less corrosive and to reduce impurities.

Take me to the river

Fennell says the basic problem in Alberta is that "the people are where the water isn't," with 80 per cent of Albertans living where only 20 per cent of the province's water is located.

Water from the province's major river basins, such as the South Saskatchewan, North Saskatchewan and Oldman rivers, is either fully allocated or almost fully allocated. In any given year, most of the allocated water in the province isn't used, but because of concerns about sustainability, freezes have been put on new allocations from the South and North Saskatchewan rivers.

Meanwhile, very little groundwater has been tapped in those areas (except for rural areas in southern and central Alberta), even though there isn't a solid understanding of how much groundwater there is in those basins.

Fennell's firm is now doing a modelling study of surface and groundwater around Fort McMurray and Cold Lake, where it is already known that there are huge groundwater resources. That modelling should be completed by next year, he says.

Fennell believes it will confirm what is already known about water resources in the north.

"The point is that there is a lot of water in northern Alberta," he says. "The water [non-saline surface and groundwater] is there to support oil and gas development, but the provincial government is pushing the oil and gas industry to use saline water."

For instance, in northeastern Alberta, there's a huge underground river called the Wiau Channel, which is 40 kilometres wide by 150 kilometres long, stretching from the Saskatchewan border to the Athabasca River. It has not been tapped and there are other similar large groundwater sources in northern Alberta.

Need to understand

Fennell says the need to fully understand the province's groundwater assets is a vital part of future planning.

Even in southern Alberta, where the groundwater potential is not as great as in the north, there is the need to look at the use of groundwater aquifers for storage, he says.

"In southern Alberta, we need a conjunctive use strategy, which involves using surface water and groundwater together in a strategy that involves aquifer storage and recovery," he says.

WorleyParsons has conducted a study for the town of Okotoks on the potential of actively injecting spring runoff for storage in groundwater aquifers, and it showed such a strategy would likely be successful.

Parched U.S. states, such as New Mexico and Arizona, as well as dry parts of Australia, have long used such storage strategies and Fennell says it's logical for Alberta to look at the same approach.

The company is also conducting a study of how the Bow River Basin could be "re-managed" by deploying different strategies to reduce consumption by large users, which includes three irrigation districts in the area and TransAlta Corporation, operator of several large power plants in southern Alberta.

However, groundwater assessment is vital and a thorough analysis of the province's total groundwater assets, including what it takes to recharge those aquifers, will be a necessary part of the next stage of the Alberta Innovates study.

Hill says Fennell's study, which is to be followed by a more thorough analysis, will answer key questions such as how much total water there is in the province, where it is located, what it's used for and how it can best be managed over time. He agrees with Fennell about a lack of understanding about the province's groundwater potential, which will now be a key part of ongoing work.

Scientists from throughout the world who specialize in water issues were involved in the first phase of the study.

They included Junguo Liu, a Chinese scholar who has developed a model that measures "virtual water," which calculates how much water is used to produce agricultural products that are exported from Alberta. He concluded that 16 billion cubic metres of water are exported from Alberta in the form of agricultural exports each year (it takes 15,000 litres of water to raise one cow, for instance).

Shawn Marshall, a scientist from the University of Calgary who is an expert in glacier and surface water flows, looked at how the relationship between both might be altered to increase flows year-round (much of Alberta's water comes from melted glaciers).

In addition, Stefan Kienzle, a University of Lethbridge hydrologist, studied how the province could better manage those flows once they end up in sub-surface basins, of which there are hundreds.

Hill calls the work that has been done so far "a good foundation," and says the follow-up studies will look at different climate change scenarios and how they might influence surface and groundwater deposits, as well as examine opportunities for groundwater storage.

"Our understanding of surface water in Alberta is good, but our knowledge of groundwater doesn't match that," he says.

In addition to the work Hill's agency is doing, the Alberta Geological Survey is updating its work on the province's groundwater resources.

Unanswered questions

Still, several questions need to be answered about groundwater, according to Hill.

For instance, even if groundwater is available in large volumes, that doesn't mean it's economical to access those volumes.

He agrees with Fennell that it may be possible for the oil and gas industry to tap non-saline groundwater in the future, but points out that the energy industry is a relatively small user of the province's total water allocation, only accounting for about two per cent.

And he also agrees about the potential importance of what appears to be huge volumes of accessible groundwater.

"Although our surface water supplies have been good, they may not be adequate for the distant future and there may be more groundwater than we have ever thought," he says. "We're premature to say that definitely groundwater will be a large part of the solution, but we will know more in another three years."

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