ABSTRACT
Water scarcity is becoming a major issue in the southern part of Alberta, Canada. The environmental impacts of the current level of extraction are being felt with 22 out of 33 main stem river reaches rated as moderately impacted, 5 as heavily impacted and 3 as degraded (AE, 2005). The Alberta Government has responded by ceasing to accept applications for new licensed water allocations in the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB). To secure a continued supply of sufficient volumes of water of adequate quality for human and economic uses, the Alberta Government has introduced a number of new institutions, legislation and two policy strategies: the Water for Life strategy in 2003 and the Land Use Framework in 2009 to integrate land and water management. The Water for Life strategy relies on improving water use ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’ by 30 percent, without any specification of what these terms mean, to reach its objective. Economic instruments, voluntary reallocations of water, and public partnerships in water planning are the main tools suggested to be used to move water to meet new demand as well as meet and secure conservation objectives. Since 97 percent of all allocated water resources in Alberta is from surface water (AE, 2014), and 75 percent of that water is allocated to irrigators (AE, 2002) the focus of these water policies is very much on the irrigation sector; the focus of this chapter is therefore also on surface water and the irrigation sector.
