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World Water Day

March 22, 2023 in AgricultureCommunityEnvironmentNoticesUtilities

You and your family, school and community can make a difference by changing the way you use, consume and manage water in your lives. Learn more here.

Choose your actions! Make a list of personal commitments to solve the water supply and water quality issues in Wheatland County. Here are some ways to help make a difference:

  • Be curious: Learn more about your water supply and your local watershed.
  • Well-safe: have your groundwater water quality tested every 1-2 years. Properly abandon un-used wells and remove well pits.
  • Flush-safe:  Have regular maintenance done on your septic system by a certified contractor.
  • Stop Polluting: Don’t put food waste, oils, medicines, and chemicals down your toilet or drains.
  • Clean up: Take part in clean-ups of my local rivers, lakes, wetlands, or beaches.
  • Save Water: Take shorter showers and avoid running the tap when brushing teeth, doing dishes, and preparing food.
  • Eat Local: Buy local, seasonal food and purchase products that used less water to produce.
  • Less Concrete: Surfaces like driveways and parking pads don’t allow water to infiltrate the ground, which can play a role in local and downstream flooding. Consider green roofs, rain gardens, or permeable pavement for stormwater solutions to reduce the risk of flooding.
  • Livestock Water: provide an alternative source of water, rather than allowing livestock to directly access to fresh water sources.
  • Nurture-Nature: Plant trees or ecobuffers which can help to use up unwanted water.
  • Xeriscape:  Use native or drought tolerant garden and turf species that won’t require much, if any watering.
  • Store Water: Rain barrels that capture rainwater from your roof is a good way to store water for drier times.
  • Buffer, buffer, buffer: Leaving a space between springs, creeks, rivers, wetlands, dugouts where there is no grazing or crop production helps to increase water quality, water storage, downstream flood mitigation and biodiversity.
  • Fence it!: Fence creeks and wetlands, to exclude cattle and other livestock.
  • Clean Drain Dry:  Clean Drain Dry your boat when moving it from water waterbody to another to reduce the chance of spreading invasive aquatic species.
  • Don’t Let it Loose: Some of Canada’s most harmful invasive species came from the improper disposal or release of plants and animals into our landscapes and waters. Released plants and animals can spread disease, outcompete native species for food and space, and degrade habitat when released into the environment. It is also unlawful to introduce species into the natural environment.
  • Leave it alone: Although it is tempting to drain nuisance wetlands, they collectively play an important role in watershed health, plus its in contravention of the Alberta Wetland protection legislation.
  • Update it: Upgrade irrigation equipment from high pressure to more efficient low-pressure systems.

#WorldWaterDay

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