Leading the way in water research

By Richard Cairney

At the University of Alberta Faculty of Engineering, approximately 30 professors and 300 researchers are conducting research related to our most precious resource—water.

What’s at stake? Globally, 1.2 billion people do not have sufficient access to clean water; 900 million lack access to basic sanitation. While the world’s population tripled in the past century, water use increased seven-fold. Climate change compounds the matter.

Civil and environmental engineering professor Evan Davies examines water from a global perspective, researching supply and demand to help manage this resource.

“Because of climate change water won’t always be available in the same amounts and with the same dependability,” he says. “At the same time, human demands are growing, so that leads to issues of scarcity.

With consumption growing and climate change altering our access to this resource, we urgently need to develop new technologies and methods to preserve our fresh water sources.

Groundwater makes up 31 per cent of the world’s fresh water supply. Geotechnical engineering professor Ania Ulrich is monitoring the impact of industrial activity on groundwater. Her research focuses on groundwater bioremediation, which uses micro-organisms to transform contaminants to harmless end products. Her work has a direct bearing on the nine million Canadians, including the entire population of Prince Edward Island, who access drinking water from wells.

Water quality is directly linked to our well-being. Health problems related to water pollution are estimated to cost Canadians $300 million per year.

“The general health of Canadians as well as the future development of Canadian industries may depend on our ability to control and reduce the impact of human activity on fresh water sources,” says Ulrich. “Technologies need to be developed to efficiently control these impacts on surface and groundwater sources.”

In all, eight engineering professors hold NSERC industrial research chairs related to water. Civil and environmental engineering professor Mohamed Gamal El-Din and mechanical engineering professor Subir Bhattacharjee are working on ways to reduce the oilsands industry’s impact. Bhattacharjee is finding new ways to filter and recycle oilsands water; Gamal El-Din leads national and international research projects investigating ways to clean oilsands tailings and to remove deadly pathogens from waste water produced at slaughterhouses.

“I have a young family. My kids are growing up in Alberta and probably will be here a long time,” says Gamal El-Din. “I’d like to make sure that they live in a healthy and sustainable environment. It’s not only about treating water or treating waste water, it’s about protecting public health and the environment health as well.”

U of A engineering students are also leaders in water education through the student chapter of Engineers Without Borders. In Malawi, they work to improve access to water and sanitation. At home, they deliver ‘Water for the World’ sessions, teaching school students about water quality issues in Canada and around the world, and they’re hosting a spring conference for high school students on water quality at home and abroad.

As well as applying engineering know-how to these challenges, Davies says educating people about these issues in labs, lecture halls and through student outreach programs is a key to successfully managing water use and reuse.

“Water has always been seen to be abundant but as scarcity grows, we have to begin to include it in policy making—and we are really just in the very early stages of doing that.”