The company behind the proposed sand mining project is partnering with the U of Manitoba on groundwater monitoring research

An Alberta company that has proposed mining silica sand in Manitoba is partnering with the province’s largest university on the experimental design of a groundwater monitoring network, a technology experts say is of increasing importance to global groundwater research.

Carla Devlin, president of Sio Silica, says the mining company will work with the University of Manitoba on a feasibility study and design a “scientifically robust, 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 renews its efforts to extract sand from the sandstone aquifer beneath the rural municipality of Springfield in southeastern Manitoba.

NDP government in 2024 Siyo Silica’s request for license rejected to extract sand from the aquifer, citing potential impacts on drinking water quality and concerns about possible subsurface collapse.

Sio’s original plan proposed drilling 7,200 wells east and southeast of Winnipeg over 25 years and extracting the highly sought-after silica sand, which is used in solar panel production, hydraulic fracking for natural gas, glass manufacturing, construction and more.

plan completed community protest over environmental concerns, and fears that leeches could enter wells and contaminate drinking water.

Sio Silica proposed drilling fewer wells, moving more slowly and extracting less sand in a new attempt to obtain a license last year.

Devlin says the partnership with the university is separate from the company’s second attempt at an environmental license, but it represents a “level of transparency” that could be added to the project moving forward.

When asked if he believed the partnership would help address previous concerns about the license request, Devlin said the research project is about understanding the aquifer as a whole.

“By supporting advanced monitoring and open data, we are helping to ensure that decisions are informed by science, transparency and long-term management – ​​not by assumptions of fear.”

According to Devlin, Sio Silica’s technology team calls the research project a “game changer.”

“For the first time, the southern Manitoba aquifer will be studied as a whole system, creating a comprehensive groundwater database that would cost the government millions of dollars to replicate.”

‘Learn to listen to the water’‘

Ricardo Mantilla, an associate professor in 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 gravity field as groundwater flows.

“Basically, the land is heavy or light depending on how much water is in it, so there’s this new set of technologies that use gravimetry — which measures the gravity experienced at a location — to determine how much water is there,” Mantilla said Tuesday.

“To my understanding, there is only one device of this type that is being actively used in Canada.”

However, the technology can only determine the quantity of groundwater – not the quality of the water, he said.

While the research will be important for the future of SiO silica in Manitoba, Mantilla says the project is also important for the province as a whole, where the interaction between surface water and groundwater dominates the movement of water in the province’s environment.

“We have to learn how to listen to the water,” he said.

Landon Halloran, a Canadian-born hydrogeologist and hydrogeophysicist who teaches at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, says quantum gravimetry has been used to develop new groundwater monitoring tools around the world in recent years.

For example, NASA’s Grace Follow-On Satellite Researchers around the world are using quantum gravimetry to measure changes in water levels, said Halloran, who is not associated with the Sio Silica/University of Manitoba project.

“The problem with this is that the spatial resolution is very large, so you can’t say anything about one location versus a location a few tens of kilometers away,” Halloran said Tuesday.

“It’s good for global-scale problems, but not for more local problems.”

Drilling wells to monitor groundwater is very expensive. Halloran says gravimetry could replace “at least some” of those, so it would be in line with Sio Silica’s goal of drilling fewer wells.

“Essentially, once you have the equipment, it’s just the cost of time and labor,” he said.

Groundwater is an “invisible water resource,” Halloran said, but people should pay attention to “the water beneath our feet.”

“It is important to protect and monitor (groundwater resources), because they are an essential component of the water cycle, and in many cases they are the source of our drinking water.”