The Nose Creek Watershed Partnership (NCWP), comprised of the City of Airdrie, City of Calgary, Rocky View County, Town of Crossfield, Calgary Airport Authority and the Bow River Basin Council, was honoured with an Alberta Emerald Award for Environmental Leadership Governance and awarded a $2,000 grant.
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Established in 1998, the award comes on the year of the partnership’s 25th anniversary of monitoring and creating policies the improve the health of the watershed.
Clint Goodman, Senior Corporate Environmental Specialist at the City of Airdrie and co-chair of the NCWP, said the group first formed as a collaborative approach to address concerns regarding the health of the Nose Creek Watershed.
“There was a common understanding that the water quality and health of the creek was deteriorating. At that point, the elected officials and administrations of these districts got together and decided to focus on ways to manage growth and our ability to maintain the creek,” said Goodman.
“Through the combination of elected officials and administrations recognizing the state of the creek in the late ‘90s as well as provincial support, it was the genesis of the NCWP,” he said.
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The partnership has since resulted in a number of policies that continue to guide development and growth in the region.
The Nose Creek Watershed Water Management Plan was one of the first documents to highlight an approach to the deteriorating health of the watershed. The plan continues to be updated, with the last alteration happening in 2018.
“It’s basically the guidance document for the partnership, as well as municipalities and land-use managers operating within the watershed. They can use this document to apply different recommendations and policies within their municipalities to protect riparian areas and help improve overall water quality of the creek and aquatic habitat,” said Goodman.
The recommendations within that plan spurred the creation of Airdrie’s environmental reserve and wetland policies. It also augmented the City of Airdrie’s stormwater management practices, he said.
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“For example, the Williamstown Ecological Reserve is largely protected as a result of the measures and recommendations set forward in the Nose Creek plan. It’s opened up a wide riparian area for aquatic life, waterfowl and indigenous grasses and vegetation in the area,” he said.
“It augmented our stormwater plan in a way to retrofit some of the older areas of Airdrie with oil and grit separators. Areas that don’t have storm ponds to help regulate and manage water quality going into Nose Creek, the recommendations from the plan and the foresight of elected officials and administration within Airdrie has produced this retrofitting program.”
Rocky View County, the City of Airdrie and the Town of Crossfield have all integrated their own policies that stem from the plan.
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One of the most prominent challenges facing the watershed’s long-term health is high growth in the region.
Goodman said the NCWP is currently undergoing development of a scale model of the watershed to help guide development decisions and gauge their impacts on the watershed.
“We’re in a special area where we have an incredible amount of growth and prosperity in the region. The challenge is balancing that with our ecological aspirations for environmental protection,” said Goodman.
“Through the recommendations of our plan, we’re currently in phase three of a five phase project to develop a watershed scale model tool, which will be integral for land-use and resource managers in the region,” he said.
“It will look at how different land use changes within the watershed can impact the creek—whether it’s how an increase in flow can result in erosion potential, or how areas can potentially go untreated and impact the water quality. This tool will be a great resource to help understand how growth in both current conditions as well as climate change scenarios impact the watershed and help manage our land use decisions.”
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The NCWP undertook the project in phases to ease funding pressures and hopes to have it completed sometime in 2026.
Still, Goodman said it is a unique project that could potentially lay the foundation for other environmental protection efforts to do the same thing.
“It’s a large endeavuor. It requires a lot of data, technical analysis, and a lot of work to bring it together,” said Goodman.
“We’re modelling surface runoff both in urban and agricultural settings. We’re modelling the channel morphology of the creek itself and its capacity in different scenarios,” he said.
“There is a wide variety of parameters, data and analysis that has to go into something like this. There’s nothing that we’ve found that quite mimics what we’re doing right now, so we’re paving the way for other watersheds to potentially develop something similar.”
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In addition to the scale model project, the NCWP has enhanced the water quality monitoring network along the Nose Creek.
As well, the group is looking to expand soil moisture and flow station monitoring to gain a better understanding of micro changes that happen within the watershed.
The group has also built a wetland inventory that’s able to better determine health ratings or potential benefit ratings throughout the wetland.
With the NCWP celebrating year 25, Goodman said the honour acknowledges the efforts of every person involved with the partnership.
“The award is recognition to all of the partners, stakeholders and funders that brought the NCWP this far. I think anybody who has been a part of the partnership or provided a supporting role, this is a recognition of everybody’s hard work,” he said.
“It’s a group win, and everybody deserves a pat on the back.”