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Safe and secure water is a cornerstone of modern life in the global North. This article critically examines a set of prevalent myths about household water in high‐income countries, with a focus on Canada and the United States. Taking a relational approach, we argue that household water insecurity is a product of institutionalized structures and power, manifests unevenly through space and time, and is reproduced in places we tend to assume are the most water‐secure in the world. We first briefly introduce "modern water" and the modern infrastructural ideal, a highly influential set of ideas that have shaped household water provision and infrastructure development over the past two centuries. Against this backdrop, we consolidate evidence to disrupt a set of narratives about water in high‐income countries: the notion that water access is universal, clean, affordable, trustworthy, and uniformly or equitably governed. We identify five thematic areas of future research to delineate an agenda for advancing scholarship and action—including challenges of legal and regulatory regimes, the housing‐water nexus, water affordability, and water quality and contamination. Data gaps underpin the experiences of household water insecurity. Taken together, our review of water security for households in high‐income countries provides a conceptual map to direct critical research in this area for the coming years. This article is categorized under:Human Water > Human Water [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protection of drinking water sources continues to gain momentum in First Nation communities on the Canadian Prairie. Through the identification of potential threats to drinking water sources communities are taking action to mitigate those threats. This article explores the extent to which climate change has been taken into consideration in recent source water protection planning community exercises. In addition, this article describes how source water protection planning has potential to enhance community adaptation strategies to reduce the impacts of climate change on source water and drinking water systems. Results are based on six case studies from Alberta and Saskatchewan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SourceWater Protection (SWP) is the process of protecting a drinking water source through land use planning policies and land management activities. The risk of source water contamination is a human health concern even in developed countries such as Canada. Much of the existing SWP literature in the more developed world is centred on small and rural water systems with a focus on capacity needs to support SWP activities and planning. These capacity needs tend to centre on five key elements: political, financial, human, technical and legal. While these contributions have added value to the water resource planning literature in rural areas, there remains a noticeable gap in the literature with respect to SWP activities in metropolitan areas. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to report the kinds of source water threats facing metropolitan water systems in Canada; and, second, to explore the utility of the capacity literature with respect to SWP planning in metropolitan Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines opportunities for a more nuanced, place-based, water governance framework in northern Saskatchewan, a natural resource rich area of Canada occupied predominantly by Aboriginal people. We explore the requirements, or requisites, under which water governance may be re-scaled from the federal and provincial level to a more regional level. Here we define water governance as the process which guides decisions, and who makes decisions, regarding water management, planning and policy. Using key informant interviews, this qualitative study identifies six requisites for effective water governance in northern Saskatchewan. These requisites include: meaningful consultation with Aboriginal residents, public participation and engagement, adequate funding, water quality monitoring, provincial leadership and access to information. Based on these findings, three broad themes emerge surrounding effective water management in northern Saskatchewan: improved communication, financial and technical capacity building, and provincial leadership. Support for a northern watershed council with broad Aboriginal membership was also identified. The subject of water governance continues to gain attention in the global and urban water policy literature. It is timely to extend water governance research into rural and remote regions of Canada to bridge water management complexity in the face of natural resource development and to support those northern Aboriginal communities wanting greater control over land and water use within their traditional territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an urban water management framework consisting of six requisites for effective water management identified based on a literature review: source water protection; stormwater management; water conservation; water pricing; wetland conservation; and drought management. The objective was to test the requisite framework in three Canadian urban centres within a region of increasing water stress, the Canadian Prairie. The findings point to variable water management efficiency across the study region and to requisite selection being regionally dependent. A common set of requisites may not be suitable for all urban regions when attempting to assess effective urban water management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

More than ten years after the water contamination events of Walkerton, ON, (2000) and North Battleford, SK, (2001) the practice of source water protection (SWP) remains a topic of policy development in Canada. SWP is a land and water planning process designed to prevent contamination of untreated water at the source. While many Canadian jurisdictions at all levels of government continue to adopt SWP plans and policies there is relatively little research on the effectiveness of SWP plan implementation. h rough key informant interviews, this paper examines factors that facilitate and constrain SWP plan implementation based on the South Saskatchewan SWP Plan initially adopted 2007. Water in the western Prairie Provinces has been described as being in a condition of impending crisis in terms of both quality and quantity. The results confirm the importance of developing SWP plans as well as the importance of building local capacity to implement these plans. Capacity gaps in the areas of technical, institutional, financial, and social capability were found to be significant barriers to SWP plan implementation in the South Saskatchewan. This paper suggests more effective plan implementation will result from improved access to data, training, and educational opportunities; greater enforcement of government legislation and regulations; and greater linkages and networks between organizations with similar objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Watersheds are under increasing stress from the cumulative environmental effects of water and land use disturbances caused by both anthropogenic and natural causes. Yet, while the science of watershed cumulative effects assessment and management (CEAM) is advancing much less is known about the institutional and capacity requirements to implement and sustain watershed CEAM. Based on lessons from a transboundary watershed in western Canada this paper presents eight institutional requirements, or requisites, for the implementation of watershed-based CEAM. We suggest that effective watershed CEAM requires government leadership to move beyond the current inward focus on project approvals toward an outward focus on the cumulative effects of all disturbances in a watershed; complementary monitoring programs at the project and watershed scale, and a means to ensure the sharing of monitoring data across watershed stakeholders; and a nested planning framework to coordinate watershed planning objectives with individual project impact assessment and decision making. Results of this paper show that simply scaling up from individual project-based assessments to the watershed scale exposes many institutional constraints that can impede CEAM action. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Watersheds are under increasing pressures from the cumulative environmental effects of human actions. Reviews of recent practice suggest that cumulative effects assessment and management (CEAM) has failed to capture the full range of stressors to Canada's watersheds. Indeed, the limitations to CEAM have been well documented; yet, there has been limited constructive evaluation to help explain why CEAM has failed to advance. In this paper we examine the underlying challenges to the assessment and management of cumulative effects in a watershed context. Based on lessons emerging from the South Saskatchewan watershed, Canada, challenges to CEAM in watersheds include stakeholder understanding and interpretation of cumulative effects; limitations in the scale of current EA practices in watersheds; data challenges; the lack of established thresholds for watershed effects; and lack of clarity regarding watershed science and regulatory capacity. The merits of a watershed-based approach to CEAM to help address these challenges to practice are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the methodological and organizational feasibility of conducting a water soft path study for Saskatchewan. Arguably, the methodology for soft path analysis is well developed and data availability for such a study in Saskatchewan is comparatively good. Given the many pressures on water resources in Saskatchewan, the timing is opportune for setting a different path for a water future in this prairie province that will enhance water security. A soft path for water may provide the means for such a future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Source water protection has gained considerable attention in the water resources literature particularly after several well publicized (non-First Nations) water contamination events in Canada. This short report explores health and place through an examination of access to safe drinking water in a developed country. For First Nations in Canada, safe drinking water remains a serious, albeit under-reported, problem. The incidence of contaminated drinking water is pervasive in many First Nations communities. Attempts to “fix” water quality problems using technology alone have produced only limited success. It will be shown that greater attention to source water protection has potential for both to improve drinking water quality as well as to re-connect health and place for First Nations in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]