forWater: NSERC Network for Forested Drinking Water Source Protection Technologies

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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.