Water is essential to everything we do, and caring for it is essential too!
FortWhyte Alive works hard to ensure healthy lakes and wetlands on the land we care for. This includes reducing the water resources we consume, testing regularly to ensure our water systems are healthy, and treating our wastewater right here on site.
You can care for your water at home too. The easiest way is to reduce what you consume in your home and one way to do that is by ensuring you’re only using what you intend to be using by checking for leaks.
Keep reading to discover everything water at FortWhyte Alive and how you can bring some water sustainability home.
FortWhyte Alive’s toilets use lake water to flush.
Across Winnipeg, toilets use treated drinking water to flush. This is the same water you drink and brush your teeth with, meaning every time you flush, you are flushing away the energy it took to transport and clean that water.
Since 1919, Winnipeg’s safe, treated drinking water has been provided by aqueduct from Shoal Lake, on Treaty 3 Territory. In contrast, Shoal Lake 40 First Nation was under a boil water advisory for 24 years. The community was finally able to access safe tap water in 2021.
FortWhyte instead uses water from our lakes to flush, which is why it may look dirty when you step into a stall. After you flush, the water in our Alloway Reception Centre and Richardson Interpretive Centre is sent to a combined system of aerated lagoons with a constructed cattail wetland where the water is cleaned to return to the lakes.
First, the sewage is pumped to the Primary Cell across the road from our solar panels. Untreated wastewater contains organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus that must be broken down and removed.
In the Primary and Secondary Aeration Cells, an aeration system ensures a high level of oxygen in the water, which supports oxygen-loving (aerobic) bacteria. These bacteria break down organic carbon.
Next, the wastewater moves to a constructed wetland that is a thriving community of bacteria, algae and wetland plants including duckweed and cattails. The wetland plants remove excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from the water, for use in the growth of leaves and stems.
The constructed wetland removes 90% of the total phosphorus that enters from the secondary cell, preventing algae overgrowth downstream.
Treated wastewater is only released into the lake if nutrient levels have dropped below that of the lake itself. Any trace nutrients remaining are consumed in the lake food chain, but to be safe, we monitor our lakes to ensure they remain healthy.
Each month, FortWhyte Alive staff, along with student volunteers, test levels of oxygen and monitor phosphorus, which is the nutrient that limits algae growth. We also test the constructed wetland at the end of the wastewater system to ensure we are not releasing water into the lakes with a higher phosphorus level than the lake water.
The cycle begins again as lake water is withdrawn for use in FortWhyte’s toilets and for irrigation at FortWhyte Farms.
To keep our water healthy, FortWhyte also works to reduce what we’re consuming.
Our buildings use low-flow fixtures, use rain barrels in our gardens, and most importantly, we fix our leaks as soon as we find them.
The City of Winnipeg recommends checking for leaks every 3 months (or whenever you get your water bill). Toilets are especially important to check because they often have silent leaks you wouldn’t otherwise notice. Try putting a drop of food colouring in your tank, and then keep an eye on your bowl over the coming hours to see if the colour starts appearing. If it does, you have a leak!
Once you’ve checked your toilets, taps, and showers for leaks, you’ve completed the Leak Detector Challenge and you can share your results with us and be entered to win prizes like a year-long FortWhyte Alive family membership valued at $135!
Bring water conservation home and enter to win!
Ready to reduce your water usage at home and help keep our waterways healthy? The spring Leak Detector Challenge is on until April 30, 2025!