Environment Minister Mark Parent announced plans to develop an expanded water resources strategy for the province on Friday. (Peter Parsons / Staff)Nova Scotia will spend the next three years examining the quantity and quality of its water.
"Especially in this era of climate change, it is important to all of us — farmers, industry, business, governments and citizens — to be aware of the importance of well-managed water resources," Environment Minister Mark Parent said Friday at the MicMac Aquatic Club in Dartmouth.
"It affects us all."
He said the strategy, which will receive $200,000 this year and about $400,000 in 2008, will start this spring with public consultations.
"We need . . . to begin talking and learning about the best ways to best manage this most precious resource."
The province will also begin publicly reporting the quality of drinking water, extend watershed mapping to include coastal areas, expand water monitoring networks and release groundwater and surface water monitoring data.
Liberal environment critic Leo Glavine said earlier this week the government should start collecting royalties on bottled water extracted from Nova Scotia sources.
Mr. Parent said the province will look at licence fees and royalties by Year 2 of the strategy.
He said the three companies that bottle water in the province use about 1.7 million litres a day, about one per cent of the three billion litres extracted daily.
"How do you separate out one industry from other industrial users and where do you start charging?" the minister said.
The second year of the strategy will also include the launch of an education program.
In the final year, a draft of the strategy will be released and the public will get another chance to comment before it is submitted for cabinet approval.
The minister said his department and nine others — agriculture, health promotion and protection, natural resources, Service Nova Scotia and municipal relations, tourism, culture and heritage, economic development, fisheries, agriculture and energy — will be involved in the strategy.
He said it will build on the 2002 drinking water strategy.
Marilyn More, New Democrat MLA for Dartmouth South-Portland Valley, said the strategy announced Friday is too slow and its budget is too small.
"I’m disappointed," she said. "I think we are going to miss a lot of opportunities around this province."
Tamara Lorincz, executive director of the Nova Scotia Environmental Network, said she hopes the strategy will include funding for community and environmental groups that are already working on protecting water resources.
"It’s going to require the commitment and the participation of all Nova Scotians," she said.
Dr. Robert Strang, the province’s deputy chief medical officer of health, said Nova Scotians only have to look at the deaths and illness caused by the tainted water tragedy in Walkerton, Ont., as a stark reminder of how devastating waterborne disease can be.
"Water is an abundant resource and we just assume that it’s safe, but as we place agriculture and industry and human use close to drinking water sources, you learn that you can’t take it for granted," he said.
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