Municipal elections might be the last thing on your mind this October, but they are important because the right aldermen, councillors, and mayors will help ensure you have safe clean water. Across Alberta on October 18, 2010, prospective candidates will vie for your vote. You have the right to ask your candidates how they rank water as a priority, and what actions they will take if elected.

Regardless of whom you elect, how municipalities access and treat water will determine the price you may be paying when you turn on your tap. As mentioned in previous Water Log articles, Alberta is reviewing how water is licensed, allocated, and transferred. One part of this Water Allocation Management System Review includes a section on how water rights are transferred, which is often referred to as "the water market." This will affect both the access to and the price of water.

In June 2010, the Alberta Water Research Institute published a set of papers on the development of a water exchange. All the papers seem to suggest price may motivate better efficiencies and conservation of water. In these papers, the authors point out that we may need differentiated criteria for the water market across different regions of the province. As a critical counterpoint, the discussion of water as an economic good will likely conflict with the view of water as an essential human right as recently declared by the United Nations.

Resolving this apparent conflict is not simple. Water has several unquantifiable values in addition to any economic value ascribed to it. Several qualities differentiate water from other market items. It is renewable. Supply can vary from year to year. Not all freshwater uses are consumptive. Water use is dynamic: the timing and location of water withdrawals are critical and every user ultimately affects every other user. The primer Worth Every Penny suggests that the price municipalities pay for water, which is reflected on your bill, can drive some conservation and efficiencies without a water market. However, it is unlikely that these measures alone will be able to secure minimum instream flow needs for Alberta's rivers.

A literature review by Chong and Sundig of over 200 publications on water markets suggests water markets are strong tools because they can be voluntary and decentralized through a single price. Chong and Sundig recognize the problems of trading water, but they argue that without water markets, water rights systems lead to inefficient water allocations and land-use as well as inadequate conservation in systems like Alberta.

For example, under our current first-in-time, first-in-right system, water conservation measures, such as having homeowners not watering the lawn during a drought, are not applied equally. The incentives for junior licencees to conserve are different from senior licencees. Some municipalities with junior licences are pressured to adopt enforceable water conservation plans whereas those with more senior licences do not. Expecting municipalities to implement conservation measures without price signals could be more costly and inefficient.

If further pricing mechanisms and more open water markets are an outcome of the water rights review, it will take talented municipal councilors and mayors to apply these tools for the public good. So encourage your candidates to articulate their position on water pricing and tools. Once they have articulated their position, you and your community will be able to decide which candidates will ensure your community has clean and abundant supplies of water.

Sources

Adamowicz, W.L., David Percy, and Marian Webber. 2010. Alberta's Water Resource

Allocation and Management System: A Review of the Current Water Resource Allocation System in Alberta. Edmonton, Alberta: Alberta Water Research Institute and Alberta Innovates. (accessed June 20, 2010).

Brandes, Oliver, Steven Renzetti, and Kirk Stinchcombe. 2010. Worth Every Penny: A Primer on Conservation-Orientated Water Pricing. Victoria, BC: the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance Water Sustainability Project. (accessed July 2, 2010).

Graphic: Voter turnout for municipal elections in Alberta. Calgary Herald, April 6, 2010 (accessed July 28, 2010).

Chong, Howard and David Sunding, Water Markets and Trading, Annual Review on Environment and Resources Vol. 31 (2006): 239-264.

Government of Alberta. 2010. Alberta's Water Allocation Management System Review. Website. (accessed July 2, 2010).