Thank you and good afternoon, everybody. It's great to see you gathering together to try to get a good understanding of our perspective on this.
I am Al Kemmere. I'm a councillor in Mountain View County and president of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta. For those of you who don't know Alberta very well, Mountain View County is dead centre in the middle of the province. RMA or Rural Municipalities of Alberta covers the whole province—north to south, east to west, touching the Northwest Territories and down to the American border. Under the jurisdiction of our members, we cover about 85% of the provincial land mass. That includes 75% of Alberta's roads and 60% of Alberta's bridges.
I think we're all gathered here to talk about the situation of the aquatic invasive species and the different types that it covers. Aquatic invasive species is an issue that impacts communities throughout Canada. Though we recognize the impact of the problem, the species of concern are diverse and vary right across the various regions of the province. In Alberta, a number of species are of considerable concern, including fish, invertebrates, plants and diseases.
We are hearing from our members and from the Government of Alberta that the species of greatest concern are the two types of mussels: the quagga and the zebra mussels. These mussels are of significant concern for our municipalities. First, they can harm municipally owned and operated assets that serve a community interest. These mussels can attach themselves to infrastructure such as water pipes, irrigation pipes and other underwater structures. They will virtually choke them down to the point of non-productive value.
Anecdotally, we have heard from other municipalities in Canada that have had to spend millions of dollars on their water plants to combat these species. We want to do what we can to avoid those costs. For most municipalities in Alberta, this would be an unbearable cost and it would cause severe harm to their ongoing sustainability. The maintenance cost alone is projected to be $75 million per year to protect or replace the infrastructure that is threatened by the species.
A second point of concern in rural municipalities is that many of our municipalities are home to irrigation. I do have to pat the irrigation sector on the back. They're doing tremendous work to try to mitigate the amount of seepage and evaporation that takes place in their systems by putting pipelines in the ground to transmit their water. However, if we do not do something, these infrastructure pieces that they've put in will be choked down similarly and it will limit the access of irrigation water. It will also limit the access of municipalities to the water that is coming through that system.
The second concern for municipalities regards the impact to the natural ecosystem. While I'm not a scientist, the information brought to me is that these can have significant impacts on the health of the water bodies. These species will go through and eliminate the plankton and all the nutrients in lakes. It would result in algae blooms, which would impact the viability of the fish population within them. These impacts change how people in our communities use their water bodies for both recreation and tourism.
In Alberta, there are 52 prohibited species of plants, fish and diseases listed in the Fisheries Act, including the black, brown and yellow bullhead catfish, goldfish, whirling disease and the Asian tapeworm, to name a few. Other plants, like the flowering rush, are gradually taking over a lot of our lowlands and wetlands as they progress.
In Alberta, in part due to the advocacy of municipalities, our provincial government has established an aquatic invasive species program. To their credit, the government of Alberta program and the public information campaign have been well received—much better than we initially thought. Although it could always be bolstered with additional resources and capacity, there has been a strong response to the complex problem. The Alberta provincial program to combat aquatic invasive species focuses on all aquatic invasive plants, fish and invertebrates.
Given the potential economic impact of the spread of aquatic invasive species in Canada and Alberta, we must make sure that the response is at a national level, as this is such a significant task and we're all linked together. We must do what we can to protect all our water bodies.
This will require a national strategy. It's a strategy that should include prevention, eradication, cross-boundary collaboration and coordination so that we work on this together, province to province, countrywide and also with our neighbours to the south.
In regard to prevention, RMA has passed a resolution advocating a zero-tolerance policy on aquatic invasive species. This starts with a public awareness campaign that is targeted to commercial, industrial and recreational water users as well as being broadly presented to members of the public.
Mandatory inspection sites are also important. They must be strategically located at key points of entry and must make it impossible, or at the very least, very difficult, to bypass the stations. While we have had those stations in my province, they are not based in the most ideal places. This means drivers are going around these stations and avoiding the inspections.
We must also have a plan for the distribution, or guidelines for the allowing, of dumping of aquarium-type fish within our systems. This often seems to be at the root of some of our problems. Outside fish ponds need to be regulated so that we do not expose our drainage systems or our water systems to invasion by these species.
Without a good eradication, in cases where species have been identified, there must be a rapid response that focuses on eradication of that species in the water body and ongoing monitoring to ensure it doesn't emerge. I am not an expert on the tools for that, so I will leave it to you to understand that allowing any tolerances is not acceptable when it comes to identifying these species
Last, it is important that all provinces, territories and the federal government work together in a coordinated approach. Provincial programs, such as those in Alberta, are proving to be effective but they would be greatly aided by a coordinated response with other provincial and nationwide programs.
We recently submitted a letter to this committee regarding this cause. There is more detail provided in that letter. I thank you for allowing us to do that.
I want to thank the committee for putting its time and energy into this issue. It is not a small issue. It does take a good forward-looking approach to make sure we can do something to limit the invasion and to protect our water bodies. Thank you for that.