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An Alberta company that has proposed mining silica sand in Manitoba is partnering with the province’s biggest university on the experimental design of a groundwater monitoring network, using technology experts say is growing in importance for global groundwater research.
Sio Silica president Carla Devlin says the mining company will work with the University of Manitoba on a feasibility study and to design a “scientifically vigorous, non-invasive system” that can track aquifer health in real time.
“It’s not just for our project, but as a broader tool for responsible resource management in the province,” Devlin told CBC News on Tuesday.
The partnership comes as Sio Silica has renewed its efforts to extract sand from the sandstone aquifer that sits below the Rural Municipality of Springfield in southeastern Manitoba.
In 2024, the NDP government rejected Sio Silica’s request for a licence to extract sand from the aquifer, citing concerns about the potential effects on drinking water quality and possible subsurface collapses.
Sio’s original plan proposed drilling 7,200 wells east and southeast of Winnipeg over 25 years and piping out highly sought after silica sand, which is used in solar panel production, hydraulic fracking for natural gas, glass manufacturing, construction and more.
The plan was met with community opposition over environmental concerns, and fears the wells could leech into and contaminate drinking water.
Sio Silica then proposed drilling fewer wells, proceeding more gradually and extracting less sand in a renewed effort to obtain a licence last year.
Devlin says the partnership with the university is separate from the company’s second attempt for an environmental licence, but represents a “level of transparency” that can be added to the project moving forward.
When asked whether she believes the partnership will help quell past concerns about the licence request, Devlin said the research project is about understanding the aquifer as a whole.
“By supporting advanced monitoring and open data, we’re helping ensure decisions are informed by science, transparency, and long-term stewardship — not assumptions of fear.”
Sio Silica’s technology team calls the research project a “game changer,” according to Devlin.
“For the first time, the southern Manitoba aquifer will be studied as a complete system, generating a comprehensive groundwater database that would cost the government tens of millions of dollars to replicate.”
‘Learn how to listen to water‘
Ricardo Mantilla, an associate professor at the University of Manitoba’s civil engineering department who is leading the research project, says it will use quantum gravimetry — which can determine the acceleration of gravity — to measure changes in the ground’s gravitational field as groundwater moves.
“Basically, the land is heavier or lighter depending on how much water it has, so there is this new set of technologies that use gravimetry — which is measuring the gravity that is experienced at a location — to determine how much [water there is],” Mantilla said Tuesday.
“To my understanding, there is only one instrument of this kind that exists that is actively being used in Canada.”
However, the technology can only determine amounts of groundwater — not water quality, he said.
While the research will be important for Sio Silica’s future in Manitoba, Mantilla says the project is also significant for the province as a whole, where interactions between surface water and groundwater dominate the circulation of water in the province’s atmosphere.
“We have to learn how to listen to water,” he said.
Landon Halloran, a Canadian-born hydrogeologist and hydrogeophysicist who teaches at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland, says quantum gravimetry has been used to develop new groundwater monitoring devices worldwide in recent years.
For example, NASA’s Grace Follow-On satellites are using quantum gravimetry to measure changes in water levels across the world, said Halloran, who is not associated with the Sio Silica/University of Manitoba project.
“The problem with that [is] the spatial resolution is very large, so you can’t say anything about one location versus one that’s a few tens of kilometres away,” Halloran said Tuesday.
“It’s good for global-scale problems, but not for more local problems.”
Drilling a well to monitor groundwater is very expensive. Holloran says gravimetry could replace “at least some” of them, so it would align with Sio Silica’s aim to drill fewer wells.
“Essentially, once you have the device, it’s just the cost of time and labour,” he said.
Groundwater is an “invisible water resource,” Halloran said, but people should pay attention to “the water beneath our feet.”
“It’s important to protect [groundwater resources] and to monitor them, because they are an essential component of the water cycle, and in a lot of cases they are the source of our drinking water.”
