This week Edmonton and area has been under a mandatory non-essential water ban due to a breakdown of the city’s largest water treatment plant. For most of us, it has only been slightly inconveniencing – I delayed laundry for a few days and I had to postpone a scheduled brew day this week (no biggie as I hadn’t started the yeast yet). Not a problem.

However, Edmonton breweries were among the businesses, including car washes and laundromats, asked to refrain from using water until the problem is fixed. So, what does one do as a brewery when you can’t use water? Well, nothing, actually. There is nothing you can do. Every aspect of beer production requires substantial amounts of water, from cleaning and sanitizing, to mashing and sparging, to packaging, to the stuff that goes in the beer itself. Each brewery differs but it takes approximately 3-6 litres of water to produce one litre of beer. So when you can’t use water, everything basically stops at the brewery.

On Thursday CBC Radio profiled two breweries who are affected by the ban which I think offers some interesting insights into what it means when you can’t use water – you can listen to the interviews here. Alley Kat’s Cam French estimates they will lose over $100,000 in revenue from the lost batches this week. Polyrhythm’s Chelsea Tessier says she will likely never catch up with the lost production. Those are some significant consequences.

Both breweries recognize that the sacrifice is needed to serve the larger good of ensuring Edmontonians have access to necessary water. And it is, hopefully, only going to be a few days of lost production. There is no question this sucks for local breweries, but it will pass soon enough.

But the event gets me thinking about water security more broadly. Alberta is looking at a serious drought this summer, with reservoirs at near-record lows already. And as climate change continues to ramp up, access to clean water will become a significant issue for many Canadians. In this context, where does beer fit in? What do we do when water is more scarce?

No one can reasonably argue that beer is a necessity, which means it must, morally, rank lower than many other uses for water. But it also is not the worst way to use water. Injecting it into oil wells seems far more wasteful to me. I can think of a number of other ways we use water in thoughtless and wasteful ways.

I know this is a society-wide problem and can’t or shouldn’t be placed only on the shoulders of the people who make beer for us. But breweries have a role to play. Naturally breweries need to look at ways to reduce water usage, but I suspect as the years move along, the question will become bigger than just increasing mash efficiency. I don’t know the answer, but I can’t help but think this week was a preview of challenges to come.