Alan Ernst and his wife Madeline were world travellers for most of their adult lives. So when they decided to settle down, they gravitated back to one of the most beautiful places they’d ever seen: the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in southern Alberta.

There, the sharp slopes of one of the world’s most dramatic mountain ranges make a sprawling dive to the foothills, which settle into the continent’s vast prairies.

When the Ernsts saw the eastern slopes for the first time, they knew it was going to be their new home.

“We just wanted to do something different,” Alan said. “We had office jobs before and we decided we wanted to live in a more pleasant surrounding than the suburbs of a major city. We wanted to live in the mountains.”

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The Ernsts found one of the last undeveloped natural areas in the eastern slopes, in between Jasper and Banff, and built the first eco-tourism lodge in Alberta. The Aurum Lodge was constructed in 1999 and opened to the public in the year 2000.  To this day it is the only dedicated, low-impact eco-tourism lodge in the province.

“I sometimes joke and say we are the antidote to Banff,” Alan laughed.

Their lodge, located along the headwaters of the North Saskatchewan river basin, overlooks Abraham Lake, which glows electric blue with the region’s signature glacial water.

But all is not serene in Alberta’s foothills. The Ernsts say a “free for all” attitude is allowing industry to encroach more and more into the wilderness each year.

“There is very little understanding for conservation here,” Alan said. “It’s all about promoting industry and letting industry do whatever they want. Unfortunately that is resulting in the loss of natural areas. We see industry coming closer every year.”

But this year there’s a rare opportunity to protect the North Saskatchewan river basin while the Alberta government develops a regional plan, called the North Saskatchewan Land Use Framework.

The big question is how the plan balances the needs of people and the environment with industrial development and motorized recreation.

The region, despite being popular for recreation, is relatively undisturbed, says Sean Nichols, a conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association.

“It tends to be low-impact recreation,” he said. “And we’re really trying to get those people, who live in and use the area, involved in the land use framework planning process.”

Abraham Lake in fall. "This image shows the beauty of an area which deserves to be protected in its current state," Alan Ernst said. Photo by Alan Ernst.

The Alberta Wilderness Association has partnered with Mountain Equipment Co-op to help bring the voices of outdoor enthusiasts into the process.

A camper, hiker or kayaker might be “one of the strongest voices that can be a part of the planning process,” Nichols said.

Previous land use planning processes have been dominated by municipal, industrial or agricultural voices.

“We wanted people who actually recreate and live in these areas to get involved in the process,” Nichols said.

“For a long time, Alberta has been of a Wild West mentality: few people and lots of land and resources,” Nichols said. But as populations in the province grow and competition over resources increases, that’s beginning to change.

“We’ve got more people, fewer resources and land to support those people,” he said.

“We’re at a stage where the wild frontier mentality isn’t working.”

With a variety of demands on the land base, officials are now moving into a new mindset of developing integrated land use frameworks that take into account not just residential, recreational or industrial needs, but also the needs and limits of the ecosystem itself.

“We’re in a place where Alberta, maybe for the first time, is ready to make those tradeoffs,” Nichols said. “At this stage, we’re cautiously optimistic.”

Four Decades of Attempts to Protect the North Saskatchewan's Headwaters

Nichols’ colleague Vivian Pharis, a director of the Alberta Wilderness Association, has been involved in efforts to protect the eastern slopes region since the 1970s.

“It’s the most beautiful example of pristine eastern slopes Rockies out into the foothills,” Pharis said. “Our national parks don’t take in much foothill land so Alberta has protected almost nothing within its two foothills regions.”

Abraham Lake is Alberta's longest man-made lake at 33 kilometres. It formed after the Bighorn Dam was constructed on the North Saskatchewan in 1972. The area "would be an ideal candidate for a Provincial Park which would provide permanent protection," Alan Ernst said. Photo by Alan Ernst.

The region has nearly achieved permanent protection twice, before the opportunity slipped away.

“What most people don’t know is that in 1986 the government almost had this whole headwaters area protected,” Pharis said. “Prior to that most of these lands in the headwaters of the North Saskatchewan were part of the national parks system.”

A lack of public concern and an absence of government initiative allowed the region’s protected status to remain unlegislated, Pharis explained, and eventually vast areas were removed from within park borders, as boundaries designating Banff and Jasper National Parks were constricted.

Each time a policy plan has made its way into document form, Pharis said, it fails to become law, leading to incremental changes that threaten the integrity of the entire ecosystem.

Although the mid-80s showed some promise, with a minister keen on conservation, things eventually “fell apart,” Pharis said, and within a few years “the oil and gas activity, forestry, etcetera were just putting so much pressure on the province, they left land use planning altogether.”

Now, through the regional land use planning process, there’s an opportunity to protect 90 per cent of the North Saskatchewan headwaters.

“It’s essentially a no-brainer to protect,” Pharis said. “It would be such a boon to Alberta and this river system if those headwater did get protection under this plan.”

An advisory council could make recommendations to the province for land use plans in the headwaters of the North Saskatchewan river basin as early as this fall.

North Saskatchewan Headwaters Crucial For Drinking Water, Wildlife Survival

For Sarah Cox, senior conservation program manager with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, the land use plan has the unique opportunity to not only protect one of the province’s most significant sources of drinking water, but to protect vast wildlife range from human disturbance, saving it for generations to come.

The North Saskatchewan River in the Kootenay Plains. Photo by Alan Ernst.

“First and foremost, the North Saskatchewan Regional Plan should protect the extensive headwaters that supply cities like Edmonton with drinking water,” she said. But it should also include the means to conserve “wildlife corridors that allow grizzly bears and other wide-ranging species to move freely from one protected area to another.”

Cox notes that the region has already lost its native herds of woodland caribou. “We don’t want to lose any more species,” she said.

According to the Alberta government’s own data, she said, there are 45 at-risk species in the North Saskatchewan planning region, including Canada lynx, bull trout and the trumpeter swan. 

The land use plan could protect the least disturbed parts of the area from motorized vehicles and forestry, she said.

“People who live in the region love to recreate in the mountains. They would like to see protective measures in place so that their children and grandchildren will be able to experience the wilderness and catch a glimpse of the remarkable wildlife that draws people from all over the world to this area.”  

Eco-Tourism Provides Economic Opportunity for Alberta

For the Ernsts, protecting the headwaters of the North Saskatchewan offers more than an ecological opportunity — it has the potential to provide a new vision for the Albertan economy.

Saskatchewan Glacier and Lake in Banff National Park. Photo by Alan Ernst.

“When you look around along the North Saskatchewan river where we live it is still pretty much the way it was 100 or 200 years ago,” Alan said. “It is still a very natural area.”

“We have high density of wildlife which is important for biodiversity and also for potential tourism development. I think keeping an area like this the way it is has as much economic importance and benefit as developing it,” he said.

Continuing to attract tourists from all over the world to the Rocky Mountain region “will require careful land use planning,” Alan said.

He thinks previous land use plans have favoured industry, rather than considering other low-impact uses of the land.

“I am hoping that this will be different,” he said, “but I fear it will be more of the same.”

For Sean Nichols from the Alberta Wilderness Association, this is the perfect time for Albertans to get involved with the North Saskatchewan land use plan.

Although the Alberta government won’t officially seek public comments until a first draft for the plan is put on the table, you can register your interest through Mountain Equipment Co-op’s Homewaters campaign today and be kept in the loop on chances to comment.

This story was made possible through support from Mountain Equipment Co-op as part of its Homewaters campaign, which is dedicated to preserving Canada’s fresh water from coast to coast.

Image Credits: Top: Aurum Lodge overlooking Abraham Lake. All photos by Alan Ernst. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

In 2010, Gord Bluesky, the lands and resources manager for Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, received a disturbing photograph in his inbox.

“One of my community members was at Patricia Beach. It was mid-November,” he told DeSmog Canada. “She sent me a picture of hundreds of dead frogs laying on the shoreline.”

Ever since then, Bluesky — whose community is located on the southern tip of Lake Winnipeg — has been especially concerned about his lake.

“I’ve got little girls. We don’t even take them to the beach any more because it’s just too nasty,” he said.

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In 2013, Lake Winnipeg was named the most threatened lake in the world by the Global Nature Fund. The biggest problem is toxic blooms of blue-green algae, sometimes so big they can be seen from space.

“It’s one of the biggest tragedies of Manitoba and of Canada,” Bluesky said.

Last week, 14 First Nations from around Lake Winnipeg gathered for two days to discuss the health of the world’s tenth largest lake. Participants recalled a time when they could see right to the bottom of Lake Winnipeg and scoop water up in their hand and drink it.

“What we wanted to do was to bring in communities to talk about what they’ve been seeing … and how we can collaborate,” Bluesky said.

Saving Lake Winnipeg is a complex challenge, says Marlo Campbell, communications director for the Lake Winnipeg Foundation, in part because the watershed stretches across four Canadian provinces and four American states, home to about seven million people.

“When you flush a toilet in Calgary, that water ends up in Lake Winnipeg,” Campbell told DeSmog Canada. “There’s no one person, no one sector, no one industry to blame. We’re all part of the problem.”

What blue-green algae does to the ecosystem

The problem with blue-green algae is when it dies, it sinks to the bottom of the lake and decomposes, which uses up oxygen, Campbell explained.

“That’s depleting oxygen for all the other things that live in the lake,” she said. “Excessive amounts of algae can actually disrupt the food web.”

That’s especially concerning given Lake Winnipeg is home to a $25 million a year fishing industry.

Then there’s the tourism industry, worth about $100 million a year, that doesn’t benefit from the algae, which Campbell describes as “just plain gross.”

“Lake Winnipeg is actually known for its gorgeous beaches, white, fine sand like you can’t even believe,” Campbell says. “Tourism industries, recreational industries, property values all depend on that.”

Why does the blue-green algae get out of control? Because there’s too much phosphorus entering the lake. There’s phosphorus in fertilizer, but also in livestock waste and human sewage.

While the finger can be pointed at some particularly bad actors (like the North End Water Pollution Control Centre in Winnipeg, which is the fourth largest phosphorous polluter in Canada), the problem is dispersed, with about 50 per cent of the phosphorus that ends up in Lake Winnipeg originating from outside of Manitoba’s borders.

Lake Winnipeg Health Plan pinpoints eight key actions

With that complexity in mind, the Lake Winnipeg Foundation has created a Lake Winnipeg Health Plan that identifies eight key actions to reduce the amount of algae-causing phosphorus reaching Lake Winnipeg. It includes everything from conserving wetlands and the Boreal forest to improving wastewater treatment and promoting agricultural water stewardship.

“There are all sorts of different ways that people can be part of the solution,” Campbell says. “This is a big challenge, but we can fix it.”

Winnipeg’s Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources teamed up with Mountain Equipment Co-op this summer as part of its Homewaters campaign to help get Canadians involved in amplifying First Nations voices to protect Lake Winnipeg.

“The First Nations have the first-hand experience,” says Tracy Ruta Fuchs, research associate with the centre. “They’ve been living on the lake for as long as they can remember … and they’re using the lake for their food and their cultural ceremonies. They’re key to solutions.”

After last week’s First Nations gathering, community champions were identified to take a lead on protecting Lake Winnipeg.

“I know our communities want to, and all have a big interest, in conserving and protecting and restoring Lake Winnipeg, but we can’t do that by ourselves,” Bluesky says. “We all need to work together.”

This story was made possible through support from Mountain Equipment Co-op as part of its Homewaters campaign, which is dedicated to preserving Canada’s fresh water from coast to coast.

Photo: Copyright Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Nothing is better than splashing around in the water on a hot summer day, but B.C. residents should be questioning whether that refreshing dip is going to make them sick, says Lauren Hornor, executive director of Fraser Riverkeeper, a non-profit organization working to ensure B.C. waters are safe for swimming, drinking and fishing.

This week, Vancouver Coastal Health Authority issued a “no swimming” advisory for three West Vancouver beaches due to high levels of E.coli, which can increase risk of gastro-intestinal illness.

“Due to high levels of bacteria in the water swimming is not recommended at Ambleside, Dundarave and Sandy Cove beaches,” the health authority said.

While some B.C. health authorities immediately post fecal coliform bacteria levels online after receiving test results for beaches, others either do not receive regular information or do not make those figures public unless levels are dangerously high, Hornor said.

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That means people do not know pollution levels at some of the region’s most popular beaches, including White Rock, Cultus Lake, Crescent Beach, Alice Lake Park Beach in Squamish and Camp Jubilee on Indian Arm, Hornor said.

“Those are the top five beaches that are very well used, but not tested or the information is not publicly available,” she said.

Test results often not made public

The main offenders, according to Fraser Riverkeeper, are Fraser Health Authority, which receives test results from Metro Vancouver, but does not make results publicly available online, and Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, which meticulously reports on Vancouver beaches, but has not yet posted any water quality data for Garibaldi, Squamish or the Sunshine Coast.

Interior Health Authority and Vancouver Island Health Authority post only safe or unsafe notifications, instead of coliform bacteria counts, and Fraser Riverkeeper is working to obtain more specific numbers.

All available results are included in Swim Guide, a free app developed by Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, which gives information and pollution counts for beaches across Canada, the U.S. and, this year, parts of Mexico.

Swim Guide marks beaches with red, yellow or green indicators, but beaches falling under Fraser Valley Health or in the Garibaldi/Sunshine Coast areas have grey markers showing no water quality information is available.

Lack of information means health risks, said Hornor, who has two young children and worries about their beach safety.

E.coli and sewage make people sick

Fraser Riverkeeper is part of Mountain Equipment Co-op's Homewaters campaign this summer and is encouraging British Columbians to call on local health authorities to provide reliable, consistent water quality information.

“When there’s E.coli and sewage or feces, whether from humans or animals, it causes all sorts of problems,” Hornor said said.

Effects can range from inflamed eyes and itchy skin to serious gastro-intestinal illness, with children and seniors most susceptible to infection. Harmful pathogens can enter the body through cuts or openings such as the mouth, ears and nose, meaning that even splashing around at the edge of the water can be a problem.

Hornor, an environmental lawyer, said two years of letters and phone calls to Fraser Health Authority have not produced an adequate response and frustrated members of Fraser Riverkeeper are preparing to submit a freedom-of-information request.

However, Gordon Stewart, the health authority’s health protection manager, said changes are on the way and numbers should be posted by late summer.

“We want to get it cracked this year. We are doing minor tweaks to the website,” he said. “We are making sure that, when we post stuff, it’s accurate and people are not confused by it.”

Beach testing is done by Metro Vancouver, which supplies results to the health authorities, and, if a beach is unsafe, warning signs are immediately posted, Stewart said.

In those cases, beaches are not closed for swimming, unless there is an event such as an oil spill, but swimmers are advised they have increased risks of gastro-intestinal illness.

Technical problems prevent test results from being posted

Vancouver Coastal Health Authority told Fraser Riverkeeper that most beaches in the Garibaldi and Sunshine Coast areas have “good to excellent historic water quality” and, with lower population levels, risks are smaller, but there are plans for more testing to ensure water quality has not deteriorated.

Vancouver Coastal spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo said in an e-mailed response to questions from DeSmog Canada that Coast Garibaldi sampling is done by provincial parks staff or private camp operators who submit samples to the provincial laboratory.

Usually results would be posted on the website, but there have been some hitches, D’Angelo said.

“Unfortunately, the website is not capturing 2014 data as we’re experiencing some problems with the provincial lab and our web host in getting the 2014 results posted,” she said. “We’re working on resolving this. We are still receiving the results, they are just not making it to the website.”

What level of risk is acceptable?

In addition to obtaining information about pollution levels, swimmers then need to decide what level of fecal coliform bacteria they consider acceptable.

Health Canada and B.C. consider anything above 200 coliform units in 100 millilitres of water to be unsafe, but Fraser Riverkeeper follows the Ontario guideline in deeming more than 100 coliform units per 100 millilitres of water to be unacceptable.

Health Canada estimates that, using its guidelines, one or two per cent of swimmers will become ill from contamination. That means about 100,000 Canadians a year get sick from swimming in polluted waters.

A yuck factor that may make swimmers think twice about a relaxing dip in the water is that Metro Vancouver discharges more than 30 billion litres of untreated waste water annually into the Fraser River and Strait of Georgia from old combined sewage outfall pipes. When it rains heavily, sewage often bypasses treatment and heads straight into the river or ocean.

Vancouver, New Westminster and Burnaby are in the process of separating storm drains and sanitary sewers to prevent raw sewage spilling into the river and ocean during heavy rainfalls, but it will be about 30 years before work is completed.

However, some swimmers will not be deterred, said Hornor, noting that there are die-hards who insist in swimming in False Creek, despite warnings that even boaters should avoid prolonged skin contact with the water.

This story was made possible through support from Mountain Equipment Co-op as part of its Homewaters campaign, which is dedicated to preserving Canada’s fresh water from coast to coast.

Photo: Carlos Mejia Greene via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Toronto residents should be alerted when sewage is being dumped into public waters, argues a legal request filed with the Ontario government  by Lake Ontario Waterkeeper.

The request was filed July 9, on the anniversary of last year’s widespread flooding, which resulted in 1.3 billion litres of sewage flowing into the Humber River and Lake Ontario over the course of 28 hours without residents being informed.

“We see it as a slam dunk,” Waterkeeper president Mark Mattson told DeSmog Canada. “We’ve never met anyone who thought it shouldn’t happen. If there’s a heat alert, you publish it. If there’s a smog alert, you publish it. It should be the same for sewage.”

The Ministry of the Environment has two months to respond to Waterkeeper’s request.

*Update on July 24: The Minister of the Environment Glen Murray accepted Waterkeepers application and now has until September 13 to decide whether or not to conduct a review. Murray told the Toronto Sun: “I feel that the public has the right to know when bypasses occur. Every city or town has a responsibility to notify the public when a bypass occurs. Municipalities have standards in law as well as their own plans in place that they need to follow.”

In 2013, 4.2 billion litres of sewage bypassed treatment plants and went straight into Toronto’s waterways.

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“There are 10 beaches in Toronto, 55 kilometres of waterfront. People have their dogs running around, people are paddling on the water,” Mattson said.

It took the Waterkeeper group four months and a Freedom of Information request to get information from the city on how much sewage was released during the flood.

“What’s the point of having the information in October when the information needs to be known when it happens?” Mattson said. 

Sewage is dumped directly into Toronto’s waterways about three times a month when the sewer system can’t handle the volume of liquids. Toronto residents paddle, sail and fish in areas where sewage bypasses are taking place, generally unaware that the water could make them sick.

Contaminated water can make people sick

Human contact with sewage-contaminated water can result in serious health concerns including eye, ear, nose and throat infections. If any contaminated water is consumed, it can cause stomach disorders and rashes, and even result in typhoid fever, hepatitis or dysentery.

“We feel like there’s a real disconnect between people and their water these days. They don’t have all the facts. There’s this tendency to think everything’s being taken care of,” Mattson said.  

The city of Kingston, Ont., has been alerting citizens when sewage overflows into waterways since 2006. That has brought a lot of pressure to deal with the antiquated sewage system, Mattson said.

“Here in Toronto, everyone just assumes it’s not that big a problem because they don’t have the information,” Mattson added.

And yet, every time there’s more than 25 millimetres of rain (last year’s storm saw 120 mm fall in just a few hours), the city’s aging pipes can’t handle the volume and sewage is flushed into waterways.

“It’s always best not to go swimming anywhere after it rains,” Mattson said.

Climate change, population growth exacerbating problem

The problem is only getting worse as the city grows and storms hit with higher frequency.

“We are having changes to our climate here, so we’re seeing more and more intensive rain than we have in the past,” Mattson said.

With safety in mind, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper created the SwimGuide app, which has been downloaded over 200,000 times and helps people find clean beaches.

The group is also part of Mountain Equipment Co-op’s Homewaters campaign, which is urging outdoor enthusiasts to sign up to bolster Waterkeeper’s legal push for public alerts every time sewage is spilled into local waters.

“I see this as a building block toward rebuilding swimmable, drinkable, fishable water in Canada,” Mattson said.  

This story was made possible through support from Mountain Equipment Co-op as part of its Homewaters campaign, which is dedicated to preserving Canada’s fresh water from coast to coast.

Image: Lake Ontario Waterkeeper

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.