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Water a precious resource

Dear Editor, The country of Canada has the largest supply of fresh water in the world and we all act like there is no end to our water supply.

Dear Editor,

The country of Canada has the largest supply of fresh water in the world and we all act like there is no end to our water supply. When people are told they cannot water their lawns they get their backs up and write letters to the editor complaining the lack of water is the Town’s problem.

Allocation of water is controlled by the Province and the system is completely broken. One small example is that Okotoks draws water from the river for sewage treatment, but a large percentage goes back into the river cleaner than when it was taken out.

The province only counts the water that was taken out not the water that was put back in. So I guess that says you don’t have to have a command of whole math to work for the Government of Alberta.

The water licence system has turned into a way for private individuals to profit from the sale of the licence to someone else, allowing a private individual to profit from selling a natural resource they don’t actually own.

Then, of course, we have the topic of a pipeline from Calgary. So how does that make any sense? The City gets its water from the Bow and Elbow Rivers. The Sheep River and Highwood River flow into the Bow River just east of Okotoks, with all this water eventually ending up in Hudson’s Bay.

The province says it’s okay to take water out of the river at Calgary but not downstream of Calgary. Another math problem?

The reality is that all these rivers are fed by glaciers or glacier-fed aquifers that are diminishing. This is a big problem!

This is an issue that Town and the Province need to look at long term.

Having lived and worked in many countries in the world where people go to great expense to get potable water, we are extremely lucky to have the water resources we have, so stewardship of this resource should be a high priority.

The Canadian government and the U.S. government have spent billions of dollars cleaning up the great lakes for that very reason and that process has been going on since the late 1970s.

Having emerald-green grass should be the least of our worries. Grass is technically a weed and very hard to kill so not having regular water for a month is not the end of the world.

Dan Robson

Okotoks

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