Water is 'issue of the next century,' says Island researcher

Water is a precious resource, critical to P.E.I. and the rest of the country.

The Canadian Rivers Institute, which has its main office in Fredericton, N.B., has been doing research on waterways for the past 15 years.

Now for the first time, an Islander has become the institute's director; Mike van den Heuvel, an environmental scientist based at UPEI.

He told Island Morning's Matt Rainnie that the work they do often has direct effect on the Island.

"I was writing a proposal last night about how we can better diagnose the causes of fish kills, for example, new and novel chemical techniques we can use when there is a fish kill to figure out what is the contaminant that's caused it," he said.

The institute is made up of water experts from across the country, mostly from universities, and some from government and industry.

I think water is the issue of the next century.- Mike van den Heuvel, Canadian Rivers Institute

Its goal is to bring together expertise to solve problems for rivers and water.

"A complex problem would be, for example, oil sands and the oil sands monitoring program, and myself and a number of others have been involved in that. That's obviously a huge issue," said van den Heuvel. "That's the sort of work that we do."

"Atlantic salmon is the other (major) one, we have a lot of people working regionally on the conservation of Atlantic salmon," he said. "How we can conserve and preserve our salmon."

Success stories for science

With the group now 15-years-old, it can point to success stories where it has seen its science bring about change.

"It certainly has happened," he said. "For example, in the early days of the Canadian Rivers Institute, they worked quite closely with the pulp and paper industry in terms of determining what the issues were with effluents and how the industry could make that change."

He said with science though, nothing ever moves fast. "This is a long-term process. We're not going to make change in one or two years," said van den Heuvel.

"We're here for 15 years, which is very long for any institute in Canada, especially one that doesn't have much core funding, so we're there because we want to see those changes. We'll see numerous governments over the time of the Canadian Rivers Institute, we just have to keep hard at it so these changes occur across decades."

He thinks it's critical his group keeps at its work.

"I think water is the issue of the next century. As a water scientist, I see climate change as something that affects water," said van den Heuvel. "We have threats and challenges. We have made improvements in many circles throughout the country but it's very slow and it's not enough yet. It is our greatest resource in this country."

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