forWater: NSERC Network for Forested Drinking Water Source Protection Technologies

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