Innovation Anthology #735:
The South Saskatchewan River Basin Climate Change Adaptation Project looks at what impact climate change will have on the Red Deer, Bow and Oldman River systems.
And as WaterSMART advisor Mike Kelly explains, managing water flow to mitigate extreme drought and flood conditions is critical.
MIKE KELLY: For example, in the Bow, 80 percent of the flow in the Bow comes from snow pack each year. So what we need to model and what the exis ting dams are there to do, actually is to capture that storage and then allow us to redistribute the water over the remaining parts of the year to supplement natural flows. For example in the Bow, the City of Calgary, 1.2 million people, there’s quite a bit of effluent that comes out of that. And so it needs a certain amount of flow in the Bow River consistently over time in order to be able to ensure that we protect the ecosystem downstream of the City of Calgary. So that’s one of the things the dams currently do. And what we were looking at is okay, how would they manage that under a really significant drought. And are there ways we can mitigate the effects of that drought by managing the dams differently?
Mike Kelly says reports on this and related water projects are posted to the WaterSMART and CCEMC websites.
Thanks today to THE CLIMATE CHANGE AND EMISSIONS MANAGEMENT CORPORATION.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
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Sponsor
Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation
Program Date: 2015-11-26