Protecting the Bow River's natural flow regime is key to assuring its environmental health.We often focus on water quality issues, but water quality alone is not sufficient to support healthy ecosystems. Healthy river systems need sufficient flows of clean water, and these flows need to follow a natural flow regime - the natural changing volumes of flow that we expect through the changing seasons.
Some of the many reasons we need healthy river flows:
Flowing water is essential for fish health, wildlife protection, riverbank maintenance, water quality, recreation, and the aesthetic enjoyment of a river; - Rivers need a guaranteed current so that fish can swim and breathe, and to assure river bank vegetation has wet roots throughout the season;
- A significant depletion of water in a river can effectively "collapse" that ecosystem. River flows are needed to dilute waste discharges and allow for the breakdown of organic waste;
- River flows help meet water quality guidelines for the protection of aquatic life and basic water quality such a dissolved oxygen levels and temperature.
