Wherever you live, you live in a watershed. A watershed is the area of land that carries water from the land after rain falls and snow melts through the soil, groundwaters, creeks and streams making its way into larger rivers and eventually the ocean. Because water flows downhill, the watershed boundaries are most always located on the top of hills or mountains.
Any changes that are made to land located in a watershed will affect the watershed. These changes could include such things as replacing forests and prairies with housing developments. This would decrease the amount of water that seeps into the ground causing water to flow more quickly over streets and sidewalks into street drains that empty into rivers. Flooding is often more severe in developed areas because water flows faster over these areas as opposed to being slowly absorbed and filtered through soil.
As rainwater drains into rivers it picks up pollutants such as chemicals, salt and oil which is carried to the river. These pollutants come from a large area of the landscape and you cannot identify exactly where they are coming from, such as one person or a company. This type of pollution is called non-point source pollution. The other type of pollution is point source pollution. The source of this pollution can usually be traced to a source, such as a sewage pipe or culvert. Non-point source pollution is more difficult to regulate than point source pollution, and it will take everyone who lives in the watershed to make a conscious choice to change their behaviours to reduce or stop non-point source pollution.
Alberta Water Facts
Today, irrigated agricultural production accounts for about 18 to 20 per cent of 
Alberta's total agricultural production.
20% of the world's drinking water is in Canada, but Alberta accounts for only 2.2% of Canada’s fresh water.
While 80% of Alberta's water supply lies in the Northern part of the province, 80% of our water demand comes from the Southern half of the province.
Alberta is estimated to have much more groundwater than surface water. However, only 0.01 per cent of this groundwater is believed to be recoverable.
There is a finite amount of potable (drinkable) water in the province
(97.5% comes from surface water and 2.5% comes from groundwater).
In Alberta, approximately two million people get their drinking water from large municipal systems. Approximately 400,000 Albertans get their water from smaller water treatment plants. The remaining 600,000 Albertans obtain their water from private systems such as wells, water co-ops or by hauling.
In southern Alberta, more than 505,000 hectares of land (just 4% of the total and that can be cultivated in Alberta) are serviced by 13 irrigation districts. These irrigation networks are used by agriculture and they also supply nearly 50 communities with water for domestic use.
Alberta has an agreement with Saskatchewan that guarantees that 50% of the
water in each of the shared, major river basins, must be allowed to flow
into Saskatchewan. This agreement is called an apportionment agreement.
Alberta shares borders with British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan and Montana. Currently, apportionment agreements only exist with Saskatchewan and Montana.
In Alberta, we use a priority system based on principles of prior allocation rights as well as policies adapted for special situations. This principle, which has been in existence since 1894, means that water rights are prioritized according to how senior the license is, regardless of the use. The older the license, the higher that user is on the priority list.
The theory of the principle is that it protects an existing user’s rights from those who come after them and is the best way to allow for orderly development. For example, during a drought, a farmer with a senior license may have access to water for irrigation, while at the same time a city with a more recently issued license may be forced to ask residents to ration water.
Sources: Alberta Environment, Alberta Water for Life Strategy, and Environment Canada.
For more Alberta Water Facts, visit Alberta Water Smart
Interesting Water Facts
- The average person uses 230 litres of water a day.
- A dripping faucet leaking one drop per second can amount to 25 litres per day or more than 10,000 litres per year. That's enough water to: wash more than 65 loads of clothing, have 140 five minute showers, or wash 40 cars. (Alberta Water for Life)
- Studies have shown that our household water use could be reduced by 50 per cent without significantly changing our lifestyle (Alberta Water for Life)
- Of all fresh water not locked up in ice caps or glaciers, some 20% is in areas too remote for humans to access and of the remaining 80% about three-quarters comes at the wrong time and place – in monsoons and floods – and is not always captured for use by people. The remainder is less than 0.08 of 1% of the total water on the planet. (Environment Canada)
- Expressed another way, if all the earth's water were stored in a 5-litre container, available fresh water would not quite fill a teaspoon. (Environment Canada)
- The interior of British Columbia and the southern Prairies hold most of the 1 million hectares (10 000 km2) of irrigated cropland in Canada, with Alberta alone accounting for 60% (Environment Canada)
Definitions of Frequently Used Terms
AGRASID Soils Database – Agricultural Region of Alberta Soil Inventory Database (AGRASID) is a database describing the spatial distribution of soils and associated landscapes within the agricultural region of Alberta.
Basin – a region of land where water drains downhill into a body of water.
Beneficial Management Practices (BMP) - practices that benefit the environment that meet or exceed legal requirements.
Benthic Invertebrate – an organism that lives on the bottom of a water body and has no spine.
Biomass – the amount of living matter in an area.
Delineation – describing graphically or verbally.
Diatom – microscopic unicellular marine or freshwater algae having cell walls of silica.
Didymosphenia germinate – a dense mat of algae growing in streams. Usually attached to rocks by a gelatinous stalk that forms a mat when growing in high densities.
Ecology – the study of the relation and interaction between organisms and their environment.
Ecosystem – all the organisms in an area, plus their physical and chemical environments.
Eutrophic – water rich in phosphates, nitrates, and organic nutrients that promote a proliferation of plant life, especially algae.
Fauna – animal life of any particular region or time.
Flora – plant life occurring in an area or time period.
Geomorphology – the study of landforms.
Geospatial – the combination of spatial software and analytical methods with terrestrial or geographic datasets.
Groundwater – water found under the surface of the ground.
Headwaters – where rivers start. The Oldman River starts on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
Hydrocoding – used in assessing water at 'pour points'.
Macrophytes – used for aquatic plants, which can be determined to the species levels by the eye.
Microbes – microorganisms.
Oligotrophic – water that is relatively low in nutrients and cannot support much plant life.
Pathogens – disease-producing agents.
Pesticides – chemicals used to kill plant, fungal, or animal pests.
Riparian Area – the area of land next to water that has moist soil. Different plants grow in this area than in the surrounding area.
Sediment – material that comes from weathering rock and is carried and deposited by wind, water, or ice.
Semi-arid ecosystem – an area with rainfall of only 25-50 cm per year.
Stewardship – The management of our natural spaces and species in such a way that it can be passed on to future generations intact.
Stormwater – precipitation (rain, snow, hail) that does not get absorbed into the ground.
Substrate – the base on which an organism lives.
Surface Water – all water found on the surface of the earth (e.g. lakes, ponds, sloughs, wetlands, dugouts, rivers)
Tributaries – Streams or rivers that flow into a larger river or other body of water.
Turbidity – the cloudiness or haziness of water.
Watershed – Another word for basin. An area of land where all the water flows to the same common area, this could be a creek, lake, river, wetland, ocean, etc.