The Alberta Water Council closure is a warning for inclusive watershed governance

A long-standing, multi-stakeholder, consensus-building, “shared governance” model that was built into Alberta’s own water governance framework is set to shut down after all of its funding was cut. The Alberta Water Council (AWC) was an independent council bringing together diverse viewpoints to provide expert advice to the province on water policy. 

A core principle of the Government of Alberta’s (GoA) Water for Life Strategy is shared responsibility: the understanding that water management works best when governments, municipalities, Indigenous communities, industry, environmental organizations, and other interest-holders come together to share knowledge, build trust, and help shape better decisions. While Alberta remains accountable for the implementation of the strategy, historically, the multi-stakeholder consensus of AWC members  informed and advised the province on safe, secure drinking water, healthy aquatic ecosystems, and reliable water supplies for a sustainable economy. 

How it Began

Collaborative governance of watersheds took root because of a previous experience managing transboundary air pollution. The drivers for action were new coal plants coming on line in the 70s and 80s and the Lodge Pole Blow-Out in 1982 — the worst sour gas blowout in Alberta’s history during which two people and many cattle died — and a billowing cloud of hydrogen sulphide dispersed across the Drayton Valley causing headaches, nosebleeds, and nausea.

The AWC was established in 2004 and modeled after the Clean Air Strategic Alliance (CASA) – that was formed in response to the disaster.  Both served an advisory function to government by facilitating partnerships between government, industry, and environmental groups for resource management decisions. The GoA described the AWC as “a platform of excellence where governments and stakeholders apply their combined knowledge and expertise to issues affecting the management of water resources in Alberta.” For instance, the AWC worked with Alberta’s distinct Watershed Planning and Advisory Councils (WPACs) sharing lessons about effective water resources management policies, practices, and tools.

Why this matters

The AWC is the canary in the coal mine for inclusive watershed governance. 

Collaborative water governance is complex, slow, and relational. Good water policy is built through careful listening, relationship-building, long-term planning, and the persistent work of keeping people with different interests talking at the same table. For 23 years, the Alberta Water Council helped hold that space with long-term staff acting as the Secretariat for a volunteer board of provincial leaders. And, with three months notice, this forum – where industry, communities, municipalities, and government met not as adversaries, but as stewards of a shared responsibility – will close. 

The Budget 2026 cuts eliminated operating funding for the Land Stewardship Centre, an organization responsible for administering watershed stewardship grants. The total savings for eliminating both programs is $1 million per year. The Watershed Restoration and Resiliency Program (WRRP), which provided grants to produce research and data to support government decision-making, is also windingdown. The last round of funding was announced in April.

The decision to shutter multiple dialogue spaces about resource management reduces support for collaborative spaces where broad public-interest voices can help shape environmental policy and shared governance. 

Across the province, water pressures are growing: drought, wetland loss, industrial demand, watershed degradation, coal threats in the Eastern Slopes, tailings-related concerns, and increasing conflict over allocation and use. At the same time, many of the spaces that once helped coordinate across sectors, share responsibility, and build public legitimacy are being weakened or removed.

That is a dangerous combination.

Collaborative governance can be frustrating. It is often slower than governments want and more demanding than industry prefers. This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Water is shared, finite, and unforgiving. Decisions during a crisis should not be made in haste behind closed doors but rather shaped through inclusive long-term public processes that reflect what is at stake. Trust, relationships, and institutional memory cannot simply be rebuilt on demand once they are gone – maintaining these relationships in advance of a crisis was the role of the Alberta Water Council

Remembering the AWC’s Success Stories

In addition to keeping people talking at a shared table, the AWC had notable successes over the decades

Voluntarily Improving Water Efficiency by 30%

Through the Water for Life strategy, the AWC helped diverse sectors to voluntarily reduce water consumption by over 30 per cent within three years. The AWC worked with Alberta’s seven major water-using sectors to voluntarily develop, implement and report on water conservation, efficiency and productivity (CEP) plans. Thanks to the mutli-stakeholder effort, an evaluation of sector improvements showed a 32% percent lower net water use from the baseline – with one sector achieving 42% improvement in water productivity.

Source Water Protection (SWP) Planning Tools

In 2018, AWC formed a project team to provide guidance on protecting sources of drinking water in Alberta which included surveying drinking water providers and assessing source water protection (SWP) practices, processes, risks, and initiatives. Results of the project supported development of a “Guide to Source Water Protection Planning” and the “Protecting Sources of Drinking Water in Alberta Companion Document“. The Guide lays out six steps to help drinking water providers develop SWP plans in collaboration with other key groups in their source water area. The companion report summarizes information to be considered when protecting public, private, and individual drinking water sources in Alberta.

The AWC found that while several communities voluntarily developed SWP plans, there was a need for more efficient and timely access to data to support the risk assessment process. Recognizing that most municipalities and non-municipal drinking water providers in Alberta do not have the tools or capacity in-house to do SWP on their own – particularly small and rural communities – AWC hired Greenland to expand a regional web-based platform to cover the entire province. The Healthy River Ecosystem AssessmenT System (THREATS™) is a sophisticated web-based platform for drinking water providers that democratizes data for municipalities and consultants to use in developing SWP plans. It transforms the complex process of source water risk assessment into a streamlined, data-driven workflow.

Drought Preparedness and Response

Relationships need to be in place before a disaster strikes. In June 2019, the GoA supported the work being conducted by the AWC, GoA, and the Miistakis Institute to test proposed drought management structures, communications channels, tools, and resources in a workshop environment. Following the deadly Calgary floods of 2013, the need to invest in grey infrastructure, and to some extent green infrastructure, grew but little if any attention was paid to droughts. 

The AWC maintained a focus on anticipating and preparing for droughts. In May 2021, they leveraged their platform, people, and connections alongside WaterSmart to bring together people in the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB) for a drought resilience simulation. This SSRB exercise was developed to assist the GoA, municipalities, Indigenous communities, and other groups (e.g., WPACs, irrigation districts) to understand and plan for drought preparation and response, including mitigation, monitoring, decision making, and communication before, during, and after a drought. 

Relationships are the key to resilience. The timing of the drought resilience simulation showed foresight and enabled WPACs and municipalities to better prepare for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the 2023 drought.

Lessons Learned

The above success stories represent an evolution of AWC’s original purpose. Over time, the priorities of the provincial government shifted away from seeking the unsolicited independent policy advice of a non-government body but the need for a consensus-building space remains. 

The closure of the Alberta Water Council should be understood for what it is: a warning. Work that has been built over decades can be dismantled at the stroke of a pen. A big part of water governance is about people talking together and relationship building – those who care about watersheds can no longer assume that good governance structures will continue or be sustained on their own. Budget cuts can represent a shift to short-term project priorities. 

The closure of AWC is happening at a time when many water leaders are warning that we are entering an era of water bankruptcy: a condition in which we are drawing more from watersheds and aquifers than natural systems can replenish. In that context, dismantling partnership-based governance creates dangerous policy gaps. 

At the heart of Water for Life is the principle of shared responsibility through partnership. Watershed security, drought resilience, and stewardship of healthy aquatic ecosystems and safe drinking water for future generations can be achieved. However, without one group tracking how different actors are contributing to implementing the strategy, it is difficult to measure progress and move as one.

What is needed now is collaboration and renewal. Water, after all, is not ideological or partisan. Water is life.