1. Interview with Danielle Droitsch

2. Weather talk makes you thirsty

3. Water Matters releases a new resource for Albertans

4. Provincial groundwater policy developments and initiatives: a sneak peek

5. Facebook, Twitter and three new YouTube videos

Interview with Danielle Droitsch

Danielle Droitsch Served as Executive Director of Water Matters from its formal inception in 2007 to the end of March 2010. We asked for her thoughts about her tenure as she reflects on her time in Alberta.

Why Water Matters? What niche did you want to fill when you created this organization? From 2004 to 2006, I was a Bow Riverkeeper. I saw there was a lack of a unified voice on provincial water issues. All the issues in the Bow were dictated less in the Bow and more so in Edmonton. So I spent most of my time on provincial water issues, working as chair of the Alberta Environmental Network Water Caucus and sitting on the Alberta Water Council.

Over time, it became clear that my passion for the Bow River watershed moved beyond the Bow to larger issues at a provincial level in other watersheds. I had a vision to create an organization whose full-time goal was to protect all watersheds in Alberta. So I gathered people who I felt were leaders — water leaders — and created a board, and together we started this organization.

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Weather talk makes you thirsty

This summer, talking about the weather may leave you parched. For approximately 40 years, Alberta's surface water supplies have been declining, while municipal, agricultural, and industrial demands for water have been increasing. Droughts and declines in runoff are expected to get more frequent and severe in Alberta. Furthermore, Albertans will have less water because of the steady shrinking of glaciers that feed major Alberta rivers with meltwaters.

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Water Matters releases a new resource for Albertans

In Alberta, 90,000 square kilometres of forests safeguard the upper reaches of the Athabasca and Saskatchewan River systems, and more than 100,000 square kilometres of wetlands store and filter water over 18 per cent of the province. Making the Connection: Water and Land in Alberta, a new report by Water Matters, concludes that the Alberta government must protect these and other watershed resources to prevent a water crisis in the province in the coming decades. This is the easiest, most effective and least costly way to maintain healthy ecosystems and the benefits they provide including clean, abundant drinking water, sustainable fisheries, and water for agriculture and other industrial uses. The best part? It will also save taxpayers billions of dollars over the long term.

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Provincial groundwater policy developments and initiatives: a sneak peek

"You need to understand it to manage it." This was a consistent theme of Below Your Watershed — Understanding the Groundwater Connection, a recent two-day conference held by the South East Alberta Watershed Alliance in Medicine Hat.

Presentations ranged from overviews of "Groundwater in Southeastern Alberta" and "The Saskatchewan Groundwater Perspective" to research on "Groundwater Under the Direct Influence of Surface Water" and a "Domestic Well Monitoring" project. All the presentations underscored the importance of a better understanding, throughout the province, of the quantity, quality, and current use of groundwater in order to improve the management of it.

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Facebook, Twitter and three new YouTube videos

Water Matters has completed three videos over the past several months. They are now available for viewing at our YouTube channel and on the videos page of our web site. Our videos cover water topics from an Alberta perspective: We examine water as a limited resource, the role of rivers in our lives, and Alberta's water allocation system (and its review).

In other news, we have been tweeting for several months now and are pleased to announce that Water Matters now has a home on Facebook as well. If you are a Twitter or Facebook user — or would like to be — we hope you'll seek us out and join the discussion!

Find us on the social web: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

Support Our Work

At Water Matters we apply our energy towards outcomes that enhance water security for all Albertans. As a small organization with little overhead, we rely on people like you for support. Please consider making a charitable donation to Water Matters today.