Today we raise a glass to clean drinking water.
Your glass of water in the water cycle
Take a good long look at the water in the glass next to you. Can you guess how old it is? Although the water in your glass may have fallen from the sky as rain just last week, the water itself has been around for as long as the Earth has.
When the first fish crawled out of the ocean onto the land, your glass of water was part of that ocean. When the Apatosaurus walked through lakes, feeding on plants, your glass of water was part of those lakes. When knights and squires took a drink from their wells, your glass of water was part of those wells.
The Earth has a limited amount of water, and that water keeps going around and around in what we call the water cycle.
Do you live in Manitoba? Here’s where YOUR water comes from
Many Manitobans rely on water from the Lake Winnipeg watershed for clean water.
The Lake Winnipeg watershed is an area of approximately 1,000,000 square kilometres, encompassing parts of four Canadian provinces and four U.S. states. Water within this watershed eventually drains into Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba’s largest lake and the tenth-largest freshwater lake in the world, on its way to Hudson Bay.
As water enters the watershed as rain or snowmelt, it soaks into the ground, replenishing underground water sources and gathering in wetlands, ponds, and creeks that feed larger streams and rivers.
The pipes distributing drinking water for the City of Winnipeg, for example, originate from Shoal Lake, Ontario, and travel over 156 kilometres to bring drinking water into the city. Other communities may transport their water from more local surface water or underground sources and may store it inside big water towers or in water reservoirs.
Water is our most precious resource
Did you know that less than 1% of the water on earth is available for drinking?
Many communities in Manitoba are still without a reliable source of drinking water, and there are approximately one billion people in the world who do not have safe drinking water.
Pollutants aren’t always easy to remove from the water, which affects the quality of our drinking water for humans, plants, and animals.
We can all make a difference in the quality of our water, and it’s a lot easier than some people assume.
Here are some ways you can help keep our waters clean:
Here's what YOU can do
A good general rule of thumb is to always treat water as if you HAD to drink it.
This means:
Not being wasteful with water
Never putting used oil or other chemicals down any drains or in drainage ditches.
Reducing nutrients (fertilizers, etc.) and other harmful substances from entering the drain
Learn more about what you can do by visiting our website to learn how to do what matters.
Or download our documents about actions you can take at your home, at your cottage, in your business, at your school, on your farms, or in your municipality.