Human health and well-being are greatly impacted by the health and quality of services provided by local ecosystems. This project aimed to make this relationship more clear and to enrich peoples’ understanding of their impacts on nature and, in turn, nature’s impact on their well-being.
This project collected information on Liard First Nation’s drinking water access, safety and sustainability in order to help community leaders make decisions about supply, management and policy. Using a community-based research method, researchers tested the quality of 40 private drinking water wells that are not regularly monitored; studied how the area’s groundwater and surface water [...]
The impacts from increased frequency and severity of summer droughts and forest fires in regions like Alberta are becoming a growing concern, as they could lead to increased risks in drinking water system outages, and also have negative impacts on downstream water quality. This project provided an estimate of the monetary value that Albertans place [...]
This project looked at how to convert a proposal’s expected impacts on water quality into information about changes in economic values. Academic researchers in the fields of biology and economics were brought together with government staff to co-create new forms of knowledge. The goal was to develop a flexible, computer-based model that could be used [...]
Municipal utilities spend considerable time, energy and chemicals to remove phosphorous and nitrogen compounds like ammonia and ammonium from municipal wastewaters. Removing these nutrients is expensive and often not commercially feasible; however, even in low concentrations phosphorous and nitrogen can degrade water quality. This 2013-2015 project created an effluent of specific, elevated, concentrated feedstock amenable [...]
The processing of fruit and vegetables requires high volumes of potable water and standards for wastewater being released into the municipal system have become more stringent. Little is known about the physical and chemical characteristics of wastewater derived from different processing operations, and subsequently which technologies are most effective for each crop type.
This project deals with clarifying a common framework and approach to management options, one that can be used by providers and regulators to approach management choices and underpin their commitment to the central task of maintaining a vigilant focus on the following: How best can drinking water providers and their regulators address risk and uncertainty [...]
Source water characterization is an important component in the multi-barrier protection of drinking water, and accurate data on pathogens is critical for treatment design, monitoring and risk assessment. This study determined pathogen loadings from the Grand River watershed and measured pathogen occurrence and concentrations in river water.
Fecal contamination of water is currently assessed by culturing fecal indicator bacterial such as Escherichia coli (E. coli), because indicator organisms are simpler to detect than pathogens. However, these methods do not provide information about source contamination or the presence of microbial pathogens. The goal of this project was to narrow the gap in the [...]
Wastewater management in Canada’s Far North is challenging for many reasons: extreme cold climate, permafrost, short summers, remote locations, smaller populations and a shortage of skilled operators. Because of this, many communities use passive technologies like waste stabilization ponds — exclusively, or in combination with a wetland treatment area. This research examines existing treatment performance [...]