By Curtis Galbraith

MPWA planning assessment of Wapiti River water supply

Jul 18, 2018 | 5:30 AM

The Mighty Peace Watershed Alliance is hoping to do an assessment of potential hazards to the Wapiti River’s water supply.
 
The group’s Watershed Coordinator Adam Norris says this would come up with ways of preventing something bad from happening.
 
“Definitely, one that comes to mind is what are we doing with Highway 40 bridge across the Wapiti River. That’s obviously a big, potential risk to the water that Grande Prairie and surrounding area uses.”
 
Norris says the quality of a water supply is hard to assess, as that water comes from many different places.
 
“It’s not one point source. Most pipes that draw from the river are at one point, you can measure how much water is there, how much you can withdraw. Water quality is affected by run-off, so whatever goes across the landscape; someone’s driveway, someone’s lawn, a field, through the woods, all those sorts of things.”
 
He adds they would like some ideas in place.
 
“If you identify the hazards, those things that could go wrong, then you have to figure out what would be impacted, how bad would it be, and we call that risk assessment. That’s the likelihood times the impact. You come up with a score that gives you a ranking, a relative ranking, then you can see what things can we do to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
 
The hope is to start this assessment in November or December. It would take a couple months to complete.
 
Norris spoke to County of Grande Prairie Council about this project Monday. He is asking municipalities and other companies and groups to join the project and appoint someone to help come up with recommendations.