kgousseau@medicinehatnews.com
The Alberta government is cutting back on water quality monitoring in remote areas as part of its strategy to shrink the province’s $4.7-billion budget deficit.
Environment Minister and local MLA Rob Renner spoke about the money-saving measure during a speech at the Groundwater Conference in Medicine Hat on Friday.
“From the point of view of managing the budget, we thought we should support, as aggressively as we can, monitoring in areas with the most pressure and focus less on remote areas,” Renner told delegates at the two-day conference, hosted by the South East Alberta Watershed Alliance.
The cutbacks to water quality monitoring are a cause for concern, says Cathy Ryan, an environmental science professor at the University of Calgary and one of the speakers at the conference.
“Having long-term monitoring is really important to understanding what’s changing in the watershed in terms of water quality,” Ryan said.
Renner says water quality monitoring in Medicine Hat and other populated areas has not been affected by the cutbacks.
“Water quality monitoring that goes on in very remote areas has been consistent for years and years, there’s been no change (in results),” Renner told reporters.
“Whether you measure it every year or every two years...as long as the trend is the same...then we’re not really compromising, we believe, our ability to have an understanding of what’s going on.
“But where there’s heavy industrial development, where there’s human interaction in a significant way, then it’s appropriate for us to continue the monitoring on a regular basis.”
Exact details on how much money the government is saving by reducing the frequency of water testing in remote areas have not been released.
Renner estimates the savings are “in the vicinity of several hundred thousand dollars.”
The provincial budget released last month contained a total of $17.5-million in cuts to Alberta Environment.