An open-source database now makes critical water data readily available for water stewardship groups and decision-makers in the Upper (Canadian side) Columbia Basin!

Over 50 freshwater champions registered for our November 19, 2020 virtual gathering to discuss the topic of Funding Water Projects Across Canada. We had a great turnout!

We gathered to find the answer to a thought-provoking question: Is there a desire from the freshwater community to collectively call on the federal government to better fund water projects right across the country? We were asking this question because of the confluence of multiple factors:

• Organizations across the country have water-related projects ready to implement, but lack the resources to do so. As we summarized in a letter to the Prime Minister in May, the Our Living Waters Network compiled a list of over 300 such projects in only three weeks. Imagine the number of projects that exist but are not on the list? Imagine the positive impact on our waters if each of these projects were implemented!
• There is a gap in available federal funding programs that support community-level projects across the country to improve the health of our waters;
• The inclusion of a Canada Water Agency in the latest Speech from the Throne further indicates that the federal government is considering how to better support freshwater health;
• There are good regional examples of organizations asking governments (provincial and federal) for support that can be a source of inspiration for other regions.

We started the virtual gathering with three presentations:

1. A case study on the success of the BC Watershed Security Coalition in advocating for an investment in watershed security as a part of BC’s economic recovery plan (slides here)
2. The water management context in Quebec (no slides, please see recording)
3. Results from research on existing water funding opportunities in Canada from the federal government (slides here).

The recording of the virtual gathering can be found here, but as technology goes... well sometimes it doesn’t go fully. To note, the last presentation was cut off for reasons we will blame on 2020 in general (that is to say, we don’t actually know why it was cut off).

After these informative presentations, we broke into five smaller groups to discuss two questions:

1) Considering the presentation and case studies we’ve seen, what opportunities exist for a coordinated federal ask?

2) Do you feel there is value in making a coordinated federal ask for funding of water projects right across the country?

As a teaser, we certainly heard a lot of support for collectively calling on the federal government to better fund water projects right across the country. Our next steps are to fully digest the detailed notes we took from those breakout dialogues and then to report back to the freshwater community on our next steps given what we heard.

A big thank you to everyone who supported the creation of our virtual gathering and to all of you: the incredible community of freshwater champions!

What does it take to trigger implementation of recommendations posed to the Federal government? For the past nine months the Federal Water Strategy Team has been meeting to explore exactly that. In late 2018, the National Roundtable on Community Based Water Monitoring released a collaborative report with detailed recommendations on how the federal government could advance community based water monitoring (CBWM) efforts across the country. But has there been any action on these recommendations? We all know how frequently collaborative recommendations are published without being translated into action.

Since January 2020, 10 water leaders (NGO’s, funders, tech, academic, watershed groups) from across the country have come together, motivated by their shared goal: to spur federal action on the 2018 CBWM recommendations. Their continued commitment and regional expertise combined with third-party coordination support from OLW has created a fertile container for collaboration. 

The group began by prioritizing the roundtable’s 64 sub-recommendations landing on 4 as collective priorities across the country. These 4 priorities were framed in a letter to Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada Jonathan Wilkinson which put into context why these priorities are important in today's ever changing climate.  

In follow up to this letter, the Strategy Team is leaning on their government relations skills and engaging government contacts and MPs to validate CBWM as a credible and invaluable source of badly needed water data. As our momentum grows, so does the size and coverage of our Strategy Team. The group of 10 has grown to 20 representing CBWM programs in 5 provinces and with 5 National groups.

Coordinating ‘strategy teams’ is a service OLW offers to Network members working collaboratively to turn the curve on any of our collective impact measures. We provide coordination, and in some cases funding, to help maintain momentum and overcome capacity restraints that usually arise when this type of collaborative work is performed “off the sides of leaders’ desks”. 

Collaboration is valuable work, we want to recognize that. And it leads to results!

Does this impact story inspire you to want to join the network? Already a network member and want to be a part this teams next steps?

Investing in 'shovel-ready' and 'shovel-worthy' jobs that advance climate resiliency and water security can create an immediate 3638 jobs and nearly 1.5 million job hours in over 300 projects across the country. By prioritizing investment in small, rural and Indigenous communities we can put people to work across numerous impacted communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast.

Read our letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and to members of the Green Recovery Taskforce, including summary of our research and the over 300 projects we identified.

A new online platform will help close the gap between data and decision-making. 

Lake Winnipeg DataStream is an open-access, online portal for water-quality data. Led nationally by The Gordon Foundation, Lake Winnipeg DataStream launched in collaboration with LWF on March 20, 2019. Lake Winnipeg’s portal is the third in the national DataStream network, pioneered in the Mackenzie River watershed by The Gordon Foundation and the government of the Northwest Territories in 2016. 

Advancing LWF’s core commitment to open and accessible information, Lake Winnipeg DataStream offers a platform to support strategic collaboration and innovative approaches to water policy and management.

Data sets now accessible online include phosphorus data collected by the Lake Winnipeg Community-Based Monitoring Network, long-term ecological reference data from IISD Experimental Lakes Area, and water-monitoring data from Environment and Climate Change Canada and Manitoba Sustainable Development. Provincial data contributions represent an important step in fulfilling a commitment, made at LWF’s request in 2018, to share provincial data online annually.

In today’s rapidly changing environment, no one agency or organization has the capacity to do it all. Combining data from government, industry and citizen sources gives us a clearer understanding of our freshwater resources, to support evidence-based decision-making. 

Explore more online at lakewinnipegdatastream.ca

*posted with permission from Lake Winnipeg Foundation

The uptake of Atlantic DataStream has been tremendous with 40 environmental non profits, provincial and federal governments coming on board to share their water quality data since the open access database went live in June 2018. However this wasn’t always the case. Following the kick off event, we had just under 30 monitoring groups online and still many others who were eager to share their water quality datasets. So many that it was clear that additional support was needed to get this valuable information online. 

Atlantic Water Network works with several organizations throughout the Atlantic region, many of whom had decades worth of data, but this information was not always available in accessible formats. Even with today’s technology, we hear stories of groups who have years of valuable information that is only found in paper copies, and in some cases, stored away in filing cabinets or even shoe boxes! Atlantic DataStream now makes sharing data even easier than before, with a standardized format aligned with the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency’s WQX format and safely stored incorporating Blockchain technology.

From literal shoeboxes to digitized formats, groups like St. Croix International Waterway Commission are working towards getting their water quality dataset of 15 years in one central location. With the heavy lifting of digitizing their data complete, they can be assured that this invaluable dataset is securely stored and accessible for decision makers to use in policy-making and design.

In addition to support from OLW, uptake of Atlantic DataStream was also made possible through project funding from the New Brunswick Environmental Trust Fund and Canadian Internet Registry Authority. The NB ETF  funded our Project, “New Brunswick Historical Water Quality Data Acquisition: Historic Data Informing Future Decision Making”, with the goal of building capacity among New Brunswick watershed groups to format and upload their data to Atlantic DataStream. AWN staff trained and supported NB watershed groups as they formatted and uploaded decades worth of water quality data. This was a unique approach in that we provided both financial support and staff time to get as much New Brunswick water quality data online as possible.

Funding from CIRA supported our Water to Web workshop series that addressed Data Management of water quality data. Data management plays a key role in organizing, sharing and communicating the results of monitoring programs, but is often left until the last minute or skipped entirely. The Water to Web workshops to highlight data management and help groups integrate it into their program planning.  

Even though the growth in water quality data has grown tremendously (there is nearly three times the amount of data on Atlantic DataStream compared to June 2019), there is still a lot more data that could be made accessible by uploading it to the online platform.  AWN is committed to working with data holders from all sectors to make their water quality data available on Atlantic DataStream.

Imagine watching the water rush over Niagara Falls for a full 24-hours. Now imagine it wasn’t water at all…imagine it was raw sewage. That is how much sewage was dumped into Canadian waterways in 2017. That’s 270 million cubic metres.

Where does this sewage come from? Either areas that offer no treatment, so it just flows (if that’s the word) untreated into our water bodies, or from combined sewer overflows – sewer systems that combine both wastewater and stormwater, and when they hit their maximum levels, they overflow.   

We all intuitively understand that sewage is yucky. Nobody is excited to swim, paddle or fish in sewage-affected waters. And, as you can imagine, untreated sewage wreaks havoc on water quality, and can include a who’s who list of contaminants including all kinds of bacteria (like E.Coli), viruses (like Giardia) and parasites which can make people and animals sick—and may even be lethal. It is also very high in phosphorus and nitrogen, contributing to nutrient pollution that can drive toxic algal blooms.

Though this news is not great for our waters, it is a win that Statistics Canada is now publishing the information on a new public access portal. The data shows that BC is leading the nation in total sewage released into waterways (both CSOs and untreated discharges), followed by Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Looking at Combine Sewer Overflows alone, Quebec leads the nation, followed by British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Ontario.  

But thanks to the work of Our Living Waters Network members, there are solutions to our combined sewer overflow problems. Check out the toolkit "Tackling Combined Sewer Overflows" developed by Ottawa Riverkeeper. 

On the positive side, let’s look at what a few communities are doing to solve the combine sewer overflow problem:

• The City of Ottawa is currently building a Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel, a storage facility designed to hold up to 43 million litres of sewage and stormwater. The tunnel is intended to create more capacity for combined sewers, which would take pressure off existing infrastructure in times of heavy precipitation and therefore decrease instances of overflow events. Notwithstanding this project, it would not have prevented at least nine CSO events in 2017, which generated more volume than the tunnel can hold. The tunnel, which will be operational in 2020, should stop CSOs in all but extreme weather events. 
• Although the scope of the CSOs is particularly daunting in Vancouver, there is work underway to address the issue. For example, Metro Vancouver (the regional government consisting of 22 member municipalities) is slowly separating stormwater sewers from wastewater sewers, with the goal to eliminate all CSOs by the year 2050. They are prioritizing sewers that are the worst offenders. They have also required all 22 member municipalities to adopt Integrated Stormwater Management Plans, which include actions like integrating green infrastructure into land-use planning in order to minimize runoff that makes its way to sewer systems in the first place.  The City of Vancouver is also in the process of developing a Rain City Strategy, with the goal of minimizing runoff by capturing and cleaning 90% of rainwater that falls in the city.   

While solutions need to be enacted in these specific places, it is ultimately a national challenge. One that OLW Network members are committed to turn the curve on (ending Canada’s sewage pollution problem is a priority for the OLW Network). 

If you are driving solutions to Canada’s sewage pollution problem or are looking to collaborate with those who are, please reach out so we can connect you with like-minded organizations. 

Links:

Our Living Waters Impact Measure for Combined Sewer Overflows

Statistics Canada Combined Sewer Overflow Data

Statistics Canada Municipal Wastewater Systems Overview

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This global agenda aims to catalyze actions necessary for humans to live sustainably with each other and the planet by focusing on a variety of thematic areas including people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership. To inspire action, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been developed and specific targets and indicators have been created under each goal to measure progress.

While reaching the SDGs is going to take many organizations all across the world, for each individual organization, it means understanding the important part we play in the larger picture. 

The work of the Our Living Waters Network - and the OLW shared measurement system, which drives many of the collaborative actions we take - is well aligned with many of the SDGs. In particular SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, but also with specific targets and indicators within SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 14: Life Below Water, SDG 15: Life on Land, and SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals.

We know many organizations, from governments to non-profit organizations, funders to businesses, are actively determining how to achieve the SDGs, and as a member of the OLW Network, we invite you to explore our handy guide: Our Living Waters and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which demonstrates how the OLW shared measurement system, and much of the work that you do, helps achieve these SDGs. We hope you will find this guide useful if you are looking to demonstrate how your activities contribute to the SDGs.

Taking a step back, the guide also shows how the OLW shared measurement system provides an excellent roadmap on how to achieve many parts of the SDGs, especially SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, within the Canadian context, allowing us all to play our important part in the larger picture.

In 2018, we were excited to launch our second round of grants under the Our Living Waters 2030 Fund. In total $97,000 were distributed to Our Living Waters member groups to collaboratively advance progress on at least one of our 24 impact measures. Priorities for the fund were established directly by our members through an annual survey which helps us align member focus across our impact measures given limited funding dollars. (Not an OLW Network member yet? Sign up here).

It’s amazing what a little bit can do! With these funds, Our Living Waters Network members are now working towards the following inspiring outcomes:

• Positioning fresh water as a priority issue in the lead up to the federal election;
• Working toward renewal of the Canada Water Act with Indigenous and non-indigenous partners;
• Advancing the launch of data hubs in the Columbia, Atlantic and Lake Winnipeg regions;
• Providing tools and support for communities to address sewage problems in their watershed;
• Working with 18 communities across Canada to advance adoption of transformative green infrastructure programs;
• Supporting indigenous representation at the 2018 Living Waters Rally; and
• Helping support 75 water leaders attend a national community based monitoring round-table in Ottawa to advance federal support for citizen science initiatives.

Want to read about the fantastic accomplishments Network members have already made with 2017 grants from the OLW 2030 Fund? Check out these impact stories and be ready to be inspired!

Elevating Community Based Monitoring in Canada: a national discussion

Water Knowledge is Power: supporting community based monitoring in Kaska Dene Territory

One Trillion Reasons to Tackle Combined Sewer Overflows

Communities Advancing Action Plans for Green Infrastructure

Atlantic Canada to Get New Open-Access Data Hub

These stories all highlight that together we can make a difference. Thank you to all members of the freshwater community for doing what you do!