Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2023-2024).

Drinking water is one of society's most critical water needs and delivery of safe drinking water-security-is ax000D
national strategic priority. Most Canadians are just becoming aware how fragile this essential resource is andx000D
the potentially catastrophic effects climate change and high energy costs can have on drinking water security.x000D
To reduce risks to public health, Health Canada relies on the "multi-barrier approach" to prevent or reduce thex000D
contamination of drinking water from source to tap. All variations of this framework identify source waterx000D
protection (SWP) for risk prevention and in-plant treatment technologies for risk management. Notably, all ofx000D
the barriers in this framework must be effective to ensure drinking water security. Climate change-associatedx000D
disturbances (wildfires, hurricanes, floods) have revealed alarming inadequacies in current implementations ofx000D
the multi-barrier approach. These disturbances are causing increasingly variable or deteriorated source quality,x000D
and challenging in-plant treatment technologies beyond design and operational response capacities, to the pointx000D
of service disruptions. Water industry consensus points to the pressing need for new SWP technologies forx000D
climate change adaptation to ensure secure community water systems. In Canada, effective SWP must focus onx000D
forested source watersheds because that is where the drinking water for most urban, rural, and Indigenousx000D
communities originates. Healthy forests typically produce high quality water-the value of natural storage andx000D
filtration of water by global forests has been estimated at $4.1 trillion. Forest management approaches havex000D
been suggested as SWP technologies and include thinning or prescribed burning for pre-emptive risk reductionx000D
or reactive effects mitigation of potentially catastrophic disturbances. While forest management impacts onx000D
water have been well studied, little if any of that work has focused specifically on drinking water treatability,x000D
which will likely vary in regionally. The forWater Network will provide new knowledge regarding the impactsx000D
of different forest management strategies on drinking water source quality and treatability to assess theirx000D
suitability as SWP technologies across the major ecological/forest regions of Canada.