This report is intended to help practitioners and decision makers build a business case for advanced and integrated water management. The content is based on interviews with 17 subject matter experts and thought leaders. Together, they defined a common vision, shared innovations in their unique and diverse disciplines, and suggested cross-cutting business case considerations.
Land application is one of the most common end destinations for biosolids, and the only one that allows for the beneficial reuse of its nutrients. Although current regulations and agricultural management practices are generally considered to be protective of human and environmental health, the detection of an increasing number of ESOCs in biosolids and the [...]
Canadian Water Network's Canadian Municipal Water Consortium (CMWC) takes a deeper look into national priorities in the 2015 Canadian Municipal Water Priorities Report. Last year's inaugural Canadian Municipal Water Priorities report set the stage for the initiatives of the CMWC. The CMWC's Leadership Group (CLG) identified four priority areas within the themes of integrated risk [...]
Knowledge about the occurrence of microbial contaminants in groundwater is essential when assessing public health risks. Between 1974 and 2001, human enteric viruses (primarily Norwalk and Hepatitis A) were responsible for at least 24 public health outbreaks in Canada. There are a large number of Canadian municipalities that rely on groundwater as their source of [...]
Raw domestic wastewater or sewage contains a mix of various chemicals from products that are part of our everyday life, such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, low sugar foods, domestic products, illicit drugs and natural hormones. Scientific studies have proven that these chemicals are not efficiently removed by conventional technologies in wastewater treatment plants, but [...]
This nation-wide project expands our knowledge on the removal of Emerging Contaminants in common Canadian wastewater treatment processes over a range of climatic and seasonal conditions. A significant contribution of this work is the concurrent analysis of a suite of aquatic toxicological endpoints, ranging from gene expression to whole organism responses.
A great deal of Canada’s water infrastructure was built in the 20th century, when urban areas were emerging, economic development was the main objective and abundant water was a requirement for growth. A shortage of water was an impediment to progress, rather than an obvious indicator of natural limits. Given this context, it is not [...]
Municipalities must take actions to detect problematic sites for lead in tap water and implement corrective measures to prevent exposure. This research investigated key aspects of managing lead in tap water: identifying high risk sites, evaluating water lead levels and exposure in children, and investigating the best corrective actions.
The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) in its development of the “Canada-wide Strategy for the Management of Municipal Wastewater Effluent” identified the need for coordinated scientific research as one of four components of the Strategy.
In response to developing the Canada-wide Strategy for the Management of Municipal Wastewater Effluent and the Canada-wide Approach for the Management of Wastewater Biosolids, both the Municipal Wastewater Effluent Coordinating Committee (MWWE CC) and the Biosolids Task Group (BTG) of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) identified a need for better national [...]