b'FROM FRAGMENTED EFFORTS TO A UNIFIED GROUNDWATER VISIONHow Living Lakes CanadaTurned Local Collaboration into Long-Term Water ResilienceWhen Groundwater is Invisible, The Turning Point: One System,So Are the Risks One Vision, Many PartnersAcross North America, communities rely on groundwater to sustainInstead of investing in new infrastructure, Living Lakes Canada everyday lifedrinking water, agriculture, ecosystem health. Butadopted a creative approach: use existing private and non-unlike rivers or reservoirs, aquifers are hidden. Without consistentextractive wells to build a citizen-powered observation network.monitoring, its easy to overlook shifts that signal trouble ahead. This invisibility creates blind spots for planners, policymakers, and theThrough local outreachnewspapers, events, and word-of-people they serve. mouththey built a 32-well monitoring network supported by First Nations, municipalities, landowners, and NGOs. But with such a In British Columbias Kootenay region, this challenge was growing.diverse set of data contributors, they needed one system to bring it Residents depend on glacially fed aquifers, but data collection wasall together.piecemeal and often short-lived. The cost? A lack of evidence to guide smart water management in the face of climate change andThrough a sponsorship with Aquatic Informatics, Living Lakes population growth. deployed Aquarius, a professional-grade platform trusted by water agencies around the world.The Challenge: Community Water, Incomplete DataUnlike custom-coding software or Excel, Living Lakes Canadas groundwater program lead, Carol Luttmer,working with the data in Aquarius is intuitive. recognized a troubling trend: well-meaning groundwater studies were being conducted by municipalities or consultants, only to fizzleTheres not a steep learning curve.out within a year or two.BRAEDEN TOIKKA, WATER MONITORING COORDINATORSome municipalities or organizations hire consultants to do groundwater studies for a year or two, but they may not have the capacity to keep going with data collection over the long term, explains Carol Luttmer.The result was fragmented data and limited visibility into long-term aquifer trends, at a time when climate resilience and community trust required just the opposite.'