Summary of Ducks Unlimited's report to the North Battleford Water Inquiry

Increased protection and restoration of wetlands will ensure that drinking water has two separate purification processes, a natural one that occurs within each watershed and the final purification process in water treatment plants.

While the precise contribution of individual wetlands to water quality depends on their location within the watershed and how they are connected to surface and groundwater systems, Ducks Unlimited's intensive scientific review confirmed the following:

  • Wetlands and associated habitats, function like huge water filters. Nutrients, soil particles and pollutants captured and carried by moving water settle in wetlands. Chemical processes and organisms associated with wetlands break down and retain nutrients and pollutants, preventing them from travelling downstream.
  • When water in wetlands can permeate underlying soils, wetlands help recharge underground aquifers.
  • Wetlands can be compared to sponges that capture water and release it slowly. A series of wetlands in a watershed can moderate water supplies during droughts and floods.
  • Riparian buffer zone protection programs can reduce the contamination of water from nutrients/sediment/
    pesticides/pathogens that enter surface and groundwater through runoff from surrounding land.

Summary of the potential that exists within wetlands and buffer zones to improve water quality

(as outlined in Ducks Unlimited's review of existing research for the North Battleford Water Inquiry).

Common Pollutant % removed by wetlands* % removed by buffer zones*  

Sediment

Up to 70

Up to 91

Nitrogen

Up to 95

Up to 96         

Phosphorus

Up to  92

Up to 97

Common water-borne disease

Up to 90 (removal in constructed wetlands)

Up to 74

* The cleaning capacity of every wetland and buffer zone is different. The numbers stated in this table originated in research compiled by Ducks Unlimited.

Specifically, DU's Beyond the Pipe report calls for water management policies that:

  • enhance current wetland protection strategies within the province;
  • encourage and enhance wetland restoration;
  • develop watershed associations across the province; and
  • increase coordination of water management issues among government departments and agencies.

For a copy of Ducks Unlimited's submission to the North Battleford Water Inquiry, please call 1-800-665-3825.

 
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