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Canada is often viewed enviously from south of the border because of our large availability of water. To American eyes, Canada is little more than a huge storehouse for water--much of which could be sold to drought prone areas like California. This may seem even more true to those of us lucky enough to live in the Bow valley where flooding is a more real possibility than drought. In actual fact, Canada is not nearly as wet as it may seem.

Of the total amount of water available in the world, more than 97% is salt water and of the remainder, 77% is locked up in polar ice caps and glaciers, and another 22% is groundwater. As a result, only about 1% of the planets fresh water occurs in lakes and streams which are the source of most urban water supplies. In addition, the vast majority of Canada's population is clustered within three hours of the U.S. border, while most of our fresh water is in the north and quite inaccessible. In those areas able to tap the natural underground flows of water, most have seriously depleted the supply beyond natures ability to replace the loss. In the U.S., between 1950 and 1980, the amount of water drawn from lakes, streams and aquifers has increased by 150% while the population has only increased by half.

Much of the water flowing into our lakes and river also has added quantities of municipal sewage, industrial wastes and agricultural runoff. One of Canada's most treasured features, Niagara Falls, is merely an open sewer of industrial waste. This leaves us with even less safe water to draw from in order to satisfy out ever-increasing thirst.

In this country we seem to be using more and more water all the time. In Canmore we don't sense a water shortage and so we tend to run the water while we shave and brush our teeth, do only small loads of laundry, and even run the water for minutes on end just to get it cold enough to drink. What we often forget is that all that water running into the drain has to go somewhere! It heads directly to the sewage treatment plant which is already inadequate for many of the future expansions planned for Canmore.