Time to solve our water woes

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/08/2012 (5055 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“We need to get serious about water quality in these lakes. This is now a human health concern across Canada.”

— Diane Orihel, lead author of a cross-Canada survey that found a potent liver toxin in every province’s lakes.

The water quality of several Manitoba’s lakes continue to deteriorate, while city folk, rural folk and government officials continue to point fingers of blame at each other.

The province and city dwellers say poor Manitoba farming practices, particularly from the hog industry, are dumping far too many nutrients into the watershed, which feeds ever-expanding blooms of toxic blue-green algae in Lake Winnipeg.

On the other hand, producers — who don’t necessarily deny partial responsibility for nutrient loading — say untreated water being dumped into the Red and Assiniboine rivers by Winnipeg residents is doing just as much damage, if not more, to Lake Winnipeg. Others also blame folks outside of Manitoba — namely those from North Dakota and Saskatchewan — for the damage.

In the meantime, all fingers are pointing back at the province for either unfairly targeting the agricultural sector — a moratorium on new hog barn construction in the Red River Valley, for example — or for not using more aggressive means to protect the waterways.

But the finger-pointing and province’s legislation to date has not impeded algae growth in Manitoba, as evidenced by a recent report from Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship noting large-scale algal blooms at Killarney Lake Beach, Pelican Lake at Ninette and Pleasant Valley Beaches, Sandy Lake Beach and Lake Winnipeg at Hillside, Victoria (Red Cross Dock) and West Grand beaches and at the lagoon at West Grand Beach. Algal blooms were also reported at Big Whiteshell Lake and on the Lee River.

Some of these blooms were below the recreational-water-quality guideline. But at Killarney Lake and Pelican Lake, the number of blue-green algal cells and the concentration of the algal toxin microcycstin, a potent liver toxin, were above the guidelines and prompted a warning from the province to avoid swimming where severe algal blooms are visible and to prevent pets from drinking water along the shoreline.

Over the years, the situation has been steadily worsening in Killarney’s case. The problem is so bad, the community has created a local action committee that has teamed with members of the University of Manitoba to find a solution to the blooms. The first step, as the Sun reported, is to amass as much data regarding the nutrients in the lake as possible.

“The algae blooms are the problem and we know the cause is the nutrient enrichment in the lake,” said Selina Randall, the university’s co-ordinator of the watershed systems research program. “The issue is how the nutrients got there, where did they come from and how can we reduce what’s in the lake. All of that will help to reduce the algae blooms.”

Unfortunately, the deterioration of freshwater sources is not just a Manitoba problem.

Diane Orihel, the author of a nationwide, scientific survey found the toxin in lakes from every province in the country, although the highest concentrations are in the popular cottage and recreational waters of central Alberta and southern Manitoba.

As the Edmonton Journal reported this week, of 37 lakes in the survey where microcystin levels reached up to 10 micrograms, 19 were in Alberta and eight were in Manitoba.

Orihel has urged both landowners and agricultural producers to take responsibility for the water quality in their own lakes and called for improvements to sewage treatment and restoring natural lakeside vegetation to help reduce microcystin risk.

We happen to agree — everyone in this province, from city and rural residents and business owners to provincial, federal and municipal politicians, are responsible for doing their part.

Perhaps it’s also time, as Orihel suggests, for all levels of government across the country to join forces and create a lake monitoring system across Canada.

It’s time we stop bickering and work together to find a viable solution to our mutual water quality issues, before we destroy one of our most precious resources.