Proud hosts of this Indigenous-led water quality monitoring program!

Introduction 

This program is an Indigenous-led,  water quality monitoring program that launched in 2022.  It will allow Keepers of the Water to change how water data is reviewed, used and shared, with the intention of being transparent, easily accessible and easy to understand.  This program will occur through an Indigenous lens guided by Traditional Ecological Knowledge Keepers, Creation storytelling and knowledge-sharing practices that teach us how to live in balance with the natural world during our physical time on Mother Earth. We believe that water should be drinkable from the source, not treatable because of a polluted source.

The Keepers of the Water’s focus for this project is to support Indigenous communities in having healthy and clean water, along with tools and educational resources that help our traditional science and knowledge of the territories that the Creator placed us in. Keepers of the Water stand firm and are committed to ensuring that colonized eurocentric science can no longer be the norm for environmental studies and that Indigenous Knowledge is critical and must be included. At Keepers of the Water, we believe that for Indigenous voices to be truly heard and for our communities to move forward, it is essential to harness the tools of colonial education while upholding and honoring traditional ways of life.

With the new water monitoring tools we are using, community members will measure oxygen, salinity, temperature, water levels, total dissolved solids, and PH.   Supporting Keepers of the Water’s ongoing work demonstrating the impacts of tar sands mining, including the tailings ponds and its impacts on the Athabasca River. More than a trillion litres of toxic waste are stored in tailings ponds near the Athabasca River.  These ponds are leaking into the Athabasca River.  https://www.keepersofthewater.ca/tarsands.  There are many cumulative impacts due to open pit and in situ mining, including water quality decline, water quantity decline, deforestation, land disturbance, and ecosystem contamination that includes land, air, water and living beings.

Every tributary in the Arctic Drainage Basin is vital to the Indigenous Peoples living within their watersheds. These sacred places allow Indigenous Peoples to exercise our right to hunt, fish, harvest and exist in our territories. This also includes traveling on the waters to freely practice our ceremonies and seasonally gathering food and medicines from the rivers, lakes and surrounding lands.

Climate change induced by human activity is the number one driver of lakes and rivers drying up. We are in a time when water is being commodified while simultaneously being contaminated. Access to clean water in Indigenous communities is our first priority.

You can help us sustain this ongoing work and expand this program by donating to the Keepers of the Water. Let us know if you want your donation directly to the Community Water Monitoring Program. To learn more about this program, contact our science lead, Paul Belanger, at science@keepersofthewater.ca.


WHAT WE MONITOR AND BASELINES

Keepers of the Water, Indigenous Led Water Monitoring Summary Reports


Other Relevant Water Quality reports for the Athabasca River;

Keepers of the Water partnered with GW Solutions Inc. to collate water quality data for the Athabasca River dating back to 2017 and as recent as 2022. 

The conclusions and recommendations are as follows;

CONCLUSIONS  

Based on our assessment of available information, we draw the following conclusions: 

1. The oil sands activities have had adverse impacts on the water quality of the Athabasca River over time. This can be  confirmed with increasing concentrations of sulfate and chloride, typical indicators of human disturbance. 

2. Chloride in the Athabasca River clearly indicates an increase in concentration from a median of 4 mg/l upstream of  the tailing’s ponds to medians of 16.3 mg/l, 20.3 mg/l, and 33 mg/l, for sections at the right of the first and second  series of tailing ponds, and downstream of the oil sands area, respectively.  

3. Considering the availability and adequate of some of the water quality parameters along the Athabasca River,  some of the dissolved metals concentrations such as boron, lithium, strontium, and uranium show an increasing  trend downstream of Athabasca River whereas there is a decreasing trend at the same time frame at the monitoring  stations located upstream of the lower Athabasca River. 

4. Several metals and other parameters such as total arsenic, total lead, total mercury, total cadmium, total chromium,  total aluminum, total iron and total manganese, fluoride, dissolved sulfide, pH, temperature, TDS and color have a  record of exceedances of Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality. This is predominantly observed  downstream of the tailing ponds and oil sands operations. 

5. Several parameters such as pH and alkalinity, dissolved oxygen, dissolved iron, dissolved aluminum, dissolved  sulfide, total mercury, total cadmium, total copper, total arsenic, total lead and chloride residual have exceeded  thresholds of the Guidelines for the protection of aquatic life. Similarly, this is predominantly observed at the  downstream of the tailing ponds and oil sands operations. 

 RECOMMENDATIONS 

1. We recommend continuing searching for data sources and updating the platform with not only more data from  different sources but also adding recent data from the already identified data sources. For instance, we have  recently received data from Alberta Environment prior completion of this report that we would like to integrate into  the Platform and further assess the results.

2. We recommend allocating more resources and time in interpreting the existing information, in particular identifying  parameters that show similar trends to better connect the presence of certain elements with sources. It is important  to confirm or refute the presence of certain parameters with potential natural sources. 

3. We recommend the First Nations of the Athabasca Region approach the oil sands industry partners to request that  water quality data collected by the industry be shared with them as this information describes the status of the  indigenous land and water. 

4. We recommend conducting an in-person workshop to present the tool to members of Keepers of the Water who  could benefit from its capability. 

Report

Keepers of the Water Summary of Gilles Wendling

Report

GW Solutions Inc.

This is a growing project, and we wouldn’t have been able to expand this far without the support from funders like NDN Collective and Alberta EcoTrust.

Climate change induced by human activity is the number one driver of lakes and rivers drying up. We are in a time when water is being commodified while simultaneously being contaminated. Access to clean water in Indigenous communities is our first priority.
You can help us sustain this ongoing work and expand this program by donating to the Keepers of the Water. Let us know if you want your donation directly to the Community Water Monitoring Program. To learn more about this program, contact our science lead, Paul Belanger, at science@keepersofthewater.ca.

Publicly Available Tailings Reports:

Report by Environmental Defence: One trillion litres of toxic waste and growing: Alberta’s tailings pond - Read the report

Report by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation: Alberta Tailings Ponds II, Factual Record regarding Submission SEM-17-001. Read the report