We often scold our dogs for drinking out of the toilet, but it turns out they might be onto something.
Reusing wastewater isn’t a bad idea in light of recent droughts and water shortages.
Following a water main break on June 5, Calgary was cut off from more than half of its water supply, placing the city’s 1.6 million residents under serious water-use restrictions.
Some restrictions are still in place, preventing residents from washing outdoor surfaces, filling fountains or decorative water features, or washing vehicles in the driveway or street.
Calgary also urged residents to limit toilet flushes, take shorter showers, and do fewer laundry loads and dishes to help minimize water use.
“Calgarians, I need you to do more. And I know that’s frustrating for you to hear, but there is still a real threat that we could run out of water,” said Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek.
Mayor Gondek warned residents that the taps would run dry if the city’s water use remained high.
If Calgary’s water supply were to run dry, it would severely impact essential services like firefighting.
In a water shortage, a firefighter’s access to water could mean the difference between containing a simple kitchen fire and losing an entire home—or worse.
Water’s importance is often overlooked because it is so easily accessible.
However, when that access is cut off, the impacts are felt immediately, especially when the availability of drinking water is affected.
A water main break isn’t the end of the world because it can be fixed, but some problems can’t be fixed with a patch job.
Water mains deliver water, but they aren’t a source of water. Calgary’s water comes from the Bow River and the Elbow River, which are fed by Rocky Mountain snowmelt and rain.
The city’s two treatment plants ensure that the water is safe to use and drink, but what would happen if the Bow and Elbow Rivers dried up?
Let The Rivers Run
The Bow River Watershed is massive, at 7,770 square kilometres in size. A watershed is an area of land that drains into a body of water, such as a lake or stream.
A healthy watershed provides safe drinking water. The Bow River Watershed supplies Calgary with 60 percent of its water, while the Elbow River accounts for the remaining 40 percent.
Watersheds also play an important role in combating the effects of climate change by cooling the air and absorbing carbon pollution.
Although watersheds and their rivers help minimize the impacts of climate change, they aren’t immune to it.
Research by David Sauchyn, director of the Prairies Adaptation Research Collaborative, found that the annual flow rate in the Bow River and many other rivers in the Rockies is declining.
What’s the cause? Our glaciers and snowpacks are melting at an accelerated rate.
“We’ve looked at water levels over a period of a thousand years, 900 years in the past and 100 years into the future, and it’s pretty clear there’s a long-term decline of the average water level in the Bow River,” Sauchyn told the Rocky Mountain Outlook.
In addition to glaciers, snow is melting earlier in the year. Snow melts all the time so what’s the big deal?
Snowpack is snow on the ground in mountainous areas that stick around until the arrival of warmer weather.
The resulting water flows into rivers when the Rockies’ snowpack melts throughout the spring and summer. This runoff creates a reliable supply of fresh water to millions of people for residential, agricultural, and industrial use.
A 2022 study found that 80 percent of the water contained in the Rockies’ snowpack could disappear by the end of the century if our carbon pollution continues to increase. Alberta is already feeling the effects.
“The runoff is shifting to earlier in the year, and as a result, by the time you get to summer, that runoff, which historically was occurring, is done,” said Sauchyn.
A Stomach-Churning Solution
The situation in Calgary is particularly concerning.
In 2019, the city announced that thanks to population growth and climate change, it would reach the provincial limit on daily water withdrawals from the Bow and Elbow rivers in less than 20 years.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but by about 2036, we’re going to hit the limit of our water licence, particularly on hot days in the summer, and the water shortages will only increase from there,” said Naheed Nenshi, Calgary’s former Mayor and current leader of the NDP.
Where there’s a problem, there’s a solution, but some solutions are…more creative than others.
California has been through its fair share of droughts, with many parts of the state still dealing with abnormally dry or moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
To address its water worries, the state passed new rules last year allowing water agencies to take wastewater, treat it, and put it back into California’s drinking water system giving a new meaning to ‘toilet water.’
“We live in California, where the drought happens all the time. And with climate change, it will only get worse…and wastewater is a drought-resistant supply that we will need in the future to meet the demands of our communities,” Kirsten Struve, Assistant Officer for the water supply division at California’s Santa Clara Valley Water District, told CBC News.
Don’t worry; Alberta hasn’t turned to creating tap water from toilets but several non-potable water projects across the province do use recycled wastewater.
Not-potable water refers to water that is not suited for drinking but may still be used for other purposes, such as irrigation.
For example, Crossfield, north of Calgary, gets its water from the Anthony Henday Water Treatment Plant, which serves 30,000 people.
The water is extensively treated before it is used on the town’s local golf course or for irrigation on farmland.
Using wastewater for non-potable uses is one thing, but drinking treated wastewater is another.
However, if we allow climate change to go unchecked, we might be fighting with our dogs for drinking space at the toilet bowl.
