Water, something people can’t live without with. However, water quality has always been an issue in Canada. People may not really notice it since in households, people can drink the water from the hose, or by boiling it if they are concerned about it. For example, due to population increase, it increases the demands for agriculture, manufacturing, energy and transportation. This also leads to pollution of chemicals into rivers and lakes in Canada. These pollutants threaten the water quality, and something has to be done. While increase in population is not the only reason that caused the issue with water quality.
Water pollution comes from all types of sources, and it is not as simple as people imagine. Increase in population is the reason …show more content…
The Canadian Drinking Water Guidelines was issued to serve as a guideline for the quality of drinking-water. According to Eggertson (2015), the guideline did catch some of the mines and projects which caused the water quality to fail, but only few provinces specified the reason, such as source water is contaminated, but not relating unrelated projects to the water quality. This shows that the government’s guideline was not useful in terms of finding the true reason of the failing water quality and solving the situation. Another example is in Quebec, where the provincial government had tried to tackle with the water quality for 30 years, in the way of reducing river pollution (Patonine, Hébert, & D’Auteuil-Potvin, 2012). The programs had been only partially successful since they recognized the main source of the pollution was actually agriculture, where they dumped a large amount of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N), which lead to the water quality not meeting its standards (Patonine, Hébert, & D’Auteuil-Potvin, 2012). The amount of P can still be further reduced, where studies found out that the median concentrations are still twice the Quebec’s water quality guideline (0.03 mg/1 P), and for N, the median concentration still exceeds the 0.99mg/1 N target for small watersheds and 0.7mg/1 N for large rivers (Patonine, Hébert, & D’Auteuil-Potvin, 2012). This case also shows that the government has failed to meet the standards they set to meet. These cases show that the government had put more effort towards controlling water quality, in order to achieve better
Water pollution comes from all types of sources, and it is not as simple as people imagine. Increase in population is the reason …show more content…
The Canadian Drinking Water Guidelines was issued to serve as a guideline for the quality of drinking-water. According to Eggertson (2015), the guideline did catch some of the mines and projects which caused the water quality to fail, but only few provinces specified the reason, such as source water is contaminated, but not relating unrelated projects to the water quality. This shows that the government’s guideline was not useful in terms of finding the true reason of the failing water quality and solving the situation. Another example is in Quebec, where the provincial government had tried to tackle with the water quality for 30 years, in the way of reducing river pollution (Patonine, Hébert, & D’Auteuil-Potvin, 2012). The programs had been only partially successful since they recognized the main source of the pollution was actually agriculture, where they dumped a large amount of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N), which lead to the water quality not meeting its standards (Patonine, Hébert, & D’Auteuil-Potvin, 2012). The amount of P can still be further reduced, where studies found out that the median concentrations are still twice the Quebec’s water quality guideline (0.03 mg/1 P), and for N, the median concentration still exceeds the 0.99mg/1 N target for small watersheds and 0.7mg/1 N for large rivers (Patonine, Hébert, & D’Auteuil-Potvin, 2012). This case also shows that the government has failed to meet the standards they set to meet. These cases show that the government had put more effort towards controlling water quality, in order to achieve better