Water innovation expo held at SAIT on World Water Day

Water innovation expo was held at SAIT on Friday to showcase various innovations and initiatives that contribute to water sustainability measures from numerous local organizations.

The expo featured information booths by Calgary’s different organizations working towards water sustainability measures. Over 10 associations were present at the event. Namely - CAWST, Water First, Bow River Basin Council, Alberta Wilderness Association, Elbow Watershed Partnership, City of Calgary, ALUS, Ghost Watershed Alliance Society, Higher Ground Consulting, YYC Airport Authority, AGAT Laboratories, Calgary River Valleys, and Green Calgary.

In an interview with The Press, Joe Fowler, a watershed stewardship coordinator at the Bow River Basin Council talked about his organization’s goals. “We really want to improve watershed literacy in our community.” he said. Fowler demonstrated a model at the expo and explained its working. “So, this watershed table here is a fast way that you can get people thinking about the land-water connection so it's really easy to sprinkle different materials that represent different things you might find on the landscape like sediment or dirt like animal waste, road salt, different fertilizers or nutrients that you might find.” he added.

Elizabeth Wright, a member of Water First explained what the organization is about. “Water First is a non-profit organization, which works with indigenous communities across Canada. We have three main program areas, but our focus as an organization is education and training in water science topics. So, our flagship program is the Drinking Water Program. It’s a 15-month internship where we train young indigenous adults to become certified water treatment plant operators.” she said.

CAWST (Center for Affordable Water Sanitation and Technology)

Dan Collins volunteering at CAWST’s booth explains initiatives and objectives of the organization. “CAWST is all about motivating people to train others in their countries about clean water, hygiene and sanitation. There's about 2 billion people in the world that don't have access to clean water, clean sanitation and hygiene information. So our mission globally is to educate people the basics of clean water, sanitation and hygiene.” he said.

“Because we think that once you train people and then train people to train people, we train trainers in country and local people are motivated. Then they train others and they train others and that ripple creates a wave that will create more opportunity for people worldwide.” Collins added.

Calgary Airport Authority

The Press talked with Adam Brown, government and stakeholder relations specialist at the Calgary Airport Authority, where he talked about targets and measures that the authority aims for the future.

“We manage YYC Calgary International Airport as well as the Springbank Airport and what we have here is a number of different things that talk about our water usage. So, this board here is talking about our water use target, which you can see we have a 2026 objective. So, it's part of our sustainability strategy.” he elaborates.

“We're trying to reduce water usage. You can see it really tanked over the pandemic, naturally. But even since then, we've been able to beat our 2026 target earlier.” Brown said.

“We have a lot of different uses for water. We have stormwater ponds. We’re part of the Nose Creek watershed. So, there's a lot of different impacts on that.” he added.

In addition to water innovation expo, there are other water related events in Alberta such as - Water Innovation Days and Water | Earth| Innovation Conference. 

World water day is a global event, which is recognized by the UN since 1993.