Canadian Water Network (CWN) worked with the Muskoka Watershed Council and the Muskoka Community Roundtable to review integrated watershed management frameworks used in various jurisdictions and identify governance approaches that may be appropriate for the Muskoka River Watershed.
In June of 2021, the Government of Canada committed to net-zero emissions by 2050. In November 2021, almost 200 countries at COP26 committed to the Glasgow Climate Pact that contained four main goals. Water plays a central role in achieving all of them alongside “near-global net-zero” mitigation efforts. Around the same time, Canadian Water Network [...]
In 2013, Canadian Water Network and the Water Environment Research Foundation convened an expert workshop to compile and prioritize a suite of elements that would be effective in assessing endocrine system impacts on fish as a direct result of exposure to contaminants in municipal wastewaters. CWN subsequently funded three studies in Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec [...]
Effective management of our wastewater is critical for Canadians across the country. Moving forward, we must consider how to make strategic investments that maximize the benefits to society and the environment, and prepare our wastewater systems to address the uncertainties of the future. From October 2017 to March 2018, Canadian Water Network led a national [...]
Harmful algal blooms, fed by excess nutrients in the water, are a pressing environmental, economic and public health concern in water bodies across Canada. Government organizations on both sides of the Canada-US border are responsible for setting goals, overseeing implementation and monitoring, and evaluating outcomes of nutrient management. Decisions need to be made, and a [...]
Estimates of nutrient loadings to water bodies from municipal sources are typically calculated using point measurements of nutrient concentrations and known discharge rates. However, some uncertainty in load estimates is inevitable, and it is unclear how well nutrient monitoring methods typically used in Canada support decision making by watershed managers. With financial support from Environment [...]
Effectively managing nutrient losses from agricultural lands is critical for protecting water quality, and is a core focus in regions like the western basin of Lake Erie (Canada-Ontario Lake Erie Action Plan, 2018). With financial support from Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, CWN led a project to provide an updated synthesis of [...]
Steadily increasing regulations and changing practices are gradually improving the quality of urban wastewater. By contrast, fewer controls or regulations deal with non-point-source discharges or effluent exceedances such as those that occur during extreme weather. With financial support from Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canadian Water Network led a project to examine the state-of-the-knowledge on [...]
Canadian Water Network launched the Canadian Watershed Research Consortium in 2010 with representatives from six watershed-based groups across Canada. Each node brought together diverse groups of local stakeholders and decision makers with teams of leading Canadian water researchers to develop regional monitoring frameworks that could inform decision making for Cumulative Effects Assessment and watershed management.
The objective of the project was to review, summarize and assess current knowledge regarding wastewater management as it relates to hydraulic fracturing and to identify critical gaps to be addressed by future research.