Some people living in the Chateauguay Valley are unhappy about the proposal to build a pig farm where 600 piglets would be born every week. They are worried about the smell from 1,200 sows on the proposed farm near Huntingdon, Québec, and the future of a river that runs just 530 metres from where the farm would be located. The dispute is the latest manifestation of the uneasy relationship between pig farmers and their neighbours in Québec.
Waterways are polluted when pig manure is spread on fields, critics say, and the odours coming from the farms are overwhelming. Last June, Québec banned pig farms in some parts of the province unless the operators agreed to fully treat the manure produced by the animals, reducing it to compost, fertilizer and granules.
The Fédération des producteurs de porcs du Québec has a plan to inform Québecers about changes that pig farmers are making to the way they do business. Farmers feed their pigs food with fewer phosphates and are researching ways to deal with surplus manure. Québec is the pork capital of Canada, with 4,400 operations. Source: CWWA
Canadians are not taking advantage of a process that requires federal government ministers to explain their policies, investigate environmental problems, or examine their enforcement of environmental legislation. In her recent report, Johanne Gélinas, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, urges Canadians to consider using the environmental petitions process that was established under the Auditor General Act.
Any individual, organization, corporation, or municipality in Canada can submit an environmental petition. Unlike traditional petitions, an environmental petition does not require numerous signatures. A simple letter is enough. Twenty-five federal departments and agencies are subject to the process.
Ministers are required to respond to environmental petitions within 120 days. The Commissioner coordinates the process, monitors the responses, and reports on petitions in her annual report to the House of Commons. Although this process is over five years old, only 37 petitions have been received to date.
The chapter Connecting with Canadians: The Environmental Petitions Process, is available on the Office of the Auditor General of Canada web site: www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/environment.
A charge against the Ministry of Environment related to the Deloro Mine Site, was withdrawn August 31, 2001, in provincial offences court in Ottawa. The charge was laid in November 1998 under the Environmental Protection Act for allegedly allowing the discharge of radiation from the abandoned Deloro Mine Site. Ken Jull, counsel for the Ministry of Environment, advised the court that actions had been taken in the public interest well before the charge was laid.
The Ministry of Environment, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labour and the local health unit, initiated a comprehensive environmental health risk study in the village of Deloro in March 1998. The study, the most comprehensive of its kind in Ontario, included over 175,000 radiation measurements throughout the village. The findings, released to residents in July 1999, concluded that it is safe to live in the village.
In withdrawing the charges, Ian Scott, counsel for the Ministry of the Attorney General, reminded the court that the MOE had previously been found not guilty after a lengthy trial on charges related to the Deloro Mine Site because it had exercised all due diligence. Mr. Scott told the court there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction in the circumstances.
The ministry took over the 242 hectare contaminated site as remediator of last resort in 1979 after the private owners abandoned the site. Since taking over the site, the Ministry of Environment has invested more than $16 million in the clean-up project. The ministry is in the final phase of clean-up and plans to spend another $18 million to finish. The final work will control and securely contain all types of contamination at the site, from arsenic to radioactivity.
The Ontario Ministry of Environment has ordered the owners and operators of 79 municipal waterworks to take corrective action to meet the requirements of Ontario's Drinking Water Protection Regulation. The orders follow inspections of 218 waterworks between April 1 and August 31, 2001.
This round of annual inspections found that 107 treatment plants failed to meet regulatory standards or requirements. The ministry orders corrective action in instances where there is a potential threat to human health. The 28 facilities that did not receive an order had already taken action to ensure their ability to meet the requirements of the Drinking Water Protection Regulation.
The primary reasons for failed waterworks inspections include:
Albertans continue to enjoy good air quality, according to the province's third quarter Air Quality Report. Air quality was given the highest possible rating 93% of the time from July 1 to September 30. In fact, only one hour of poor air quality was reported during that time, due to factors associated with hot weather.
Some long-term trends measured by Alberta Environment indicate that in Edmonton and Calgary:
While smog is considered a major air pollution concern in the Lower Fraser Valley, the Windsor-Québec corridor and the southern Atlantic provinces, it is only a factor in Alberta one or two days a year.
Safety-Kleen Ltd., also known as Safety-Kleen Services (Canada) Ltd., and Laidlaw Environmental Services Ltd. of Winnipeg, Manitoba, was fined $100,000 on charges relating to transport and export of hazardous waste.
Safety-Kleen Ltd. was sentenced to a fine of $50,000 for failing to give notice of the proposed export of hazardous waste under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA, 1999). They were also fined $25,000 on each of two charges under the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations (TDGR) for handling and transporting flammable materials without proper shipping documents, and handling and transporting flammable materials without applicable safety marks.
Charges stemmed from the export of 54 drums of hazardous waste paint by-products to a waste facility in North Dakota on October 15, 1998.
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| Five million tonnes of road salts are used each winter in Canada. |
A 60-day public comment period started December 1, 2001, with the publication in the Canada Gazette, Part I of the recommendation that road salts, which contain inorganic chloride salts with or without ferrocyanide salts, be added to Schedule 1 under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). The government will make a final decision on this legal step following a complete review and consideration of the comments received. Canadians are welcome to provide comments until January 29, 2002, to Environment Canada.
The government recognizes the importance of road salts in protecting roadway safety and is not proposing a ban on road salts or to put in place any measures that would compromise or reduce road safety.
Consultations will be launched next year on better ways to manage road salts so that harm to the environment is reduced. This follows the release of a comprehensive five-year scientific assessment by Environment Canada that determined that road salts in sufficient concentrations pose a risk to the aquatic environment, plants and animals.
A five-year study concluded that because of high releases around storage and snow disposal sites and through runoff and splash from roadways into soil, streams and rivers, road salts are harmful to the environment. The assessment was restricted to ecological effects as the expert panel judged that there was no evidence of human health effects.
The assessment report is available on Environment Canada's Green Lane web site at: www.ec.gc.ca/CEPARegistry.
Manitoba's Health Minister, Dave Chomiak, and Conservation Minister Oscar Lathlin, accepted a number of recommendations of the Drinking Water Advisory Committee on bacterial testing of water, November 9, 2001. The government will:
During the summer, despite the absence of any reported illnesses, Premier Gary Doer had called for the testing of water systems being used by schools, hospitals, personal care homes, and day cares.
A panel of top US water security experts cautioned public utility officers November 13, 2001, on the potential physical, chemical and biological threats to public drinking water supplies. They predicted new requirements for expanded water testing and monitoring.
The Water Security Monitoring panel, convened by the Hach Company at an AWWA Water Quality Technology Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, discussed threats to, and the security of, public drinking water supplies.
Leading engineers, consultants, environmental program managers and a retired Center for Disease Control executive, all underscored the importance of practical solutions including intensive and frequent water monitoring, physical security and emergency response plans in all water districts.
Terry Engelhardt, a drinking water specialist with the Hach Company in Loveland, Colorado, said: "Water systems of every size across the country need to be vigilant and prepared for deliberate attempts to contaminate water systems."
At the Water Environment Federation Conference in Atlanta, the Board of Directors elected William J. (Bill) Borlase to the WEF Executive Committee for the 2001-2002 term. Bill is a member of the Western Canada Water Environment Association and the Water Environment Association of Ontario.
He presently serves on the WEF Board of Directors, representing Western Canada. As the only Canadian elected to the Executive Committee, Bill is committed to representing all Canadian issues during his term of office. He also serves on ES&E's Technical Advisory Board.
A Virginia Tech engineering graduate student has made discoveries that may help prevent outbreaks of water-borne diseases in the future. Paolo Scardina, a Ph.D. candidate in Virginia Tech's Via Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), began his research as an undergraduate on the problem of air bubbles in drinking water. Working with Marc Edwards of the CEE faculty, he has continued his research as a master's and doctoral student, and has won a competitive grant worth $150,000 from the American Water Works Association Research Foundation (AWWARF).
"When you open a can of soda, bubbles form and rise to the surface," explained Edwards. "The same thing can happen in water from lakes and rivers. When air bubbles are released in a 'burp' during the treatment process, pathogens and other particles can escape removal. The last treatment barrier in most drinking water treatment plants is filtration and a burp of bubbles can punch holes in filters - tiny holes, but large enough to let particles and pathogens escape into the water that goes out to customers."
Scardina identified the causes of bubble formation while he was working on his master's degree. "Before Paolo's findings, we knew that bubbles could cause problems," Edwards said, "but we didn't know how they formed or the range of the impacts." Scardina also learned that air bubbles can interfere with the first drinking water treatment process - settling - where solid particles from incoming surface water drop to the bottom of treatment tanks. If bubbles are present at this stage, pathogens and other particles can attach to them and float on through the treatment plant.
Bubbles can also cause a dilemma for treatment plant operators at the end of the process. When bubbles form after water has gone through filtration, water quality tests may wrongly identify the bubbles as dirt particles or pathogens, even though the bubbles themselves are harmless. This decreases the validity of and confidence in water quality tests.
If heavy metals can make vegetables too toxic to eat, why not develop plants that will sequester metals as a first stage of a mining process? This could not only produce metals for industry, but also clean up contaminated soils.
Scientists at Purdue University have discovered a gene they believe helps 350 plants known as hyperaccumulators. Such plants can contain nickel, cadmium, selenium or zinc at levels hundreds of times higher than other plants. David Salt, a plant molecular physiologist and the leader of the study, says: "These plants have this extraordinary capacity to accumulate metals and we've now seen how they do it."
Scientists have enjoyed some success with phytoremediation experiments, but most known hyperaccumulators are small. By genetically modifying larger plants to become hyperaccumulators, they could speed the process, making way for development in brownfields and urban sites left unusable by industrial tenants.
A tiny nuclear reactor designed to generate power in Japanese basements is in progress. Called Rapid-L, the 200-kilowatt micro-reactor measures just six metres high and two metres wide. Initially it was conceived as a plug-and-play source of power for lunar colonies.
Environmental issues should form part of the package being considered by governments for the rehabilitation of Afghanistan. In a statement issued following the conclusion of UN-sponsored talks on Afghanistan which ended in Bonn, Germany, Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) called for those involved to consider the need for a thorough environmental assessment of the country.
Speaking at the UNEP Headquarters in Nairobi, December 6, 2001, Toepfer said: "Armed conflict, which has been waged in Afghanistan for at least 20 years, can lead to environmental degradation in areas such as freshwater, sanitation, forests and soil quality."
The Security Council has endorsed the agreement on provisional arrangements in Afghanistan pending the re-establishment of permanent government institutions. In an agreement brokered by Lakhdar Brahimi, Secretary General Kofi Annan's Special Representative for Afghanistan, delegates from four Afghan factions established a 29 member cabinet-style Interim Authority.
Toepfer said it is vital that the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people are first secured and that an interim government is in place. Then, he said, UNEP stands ready to assist in the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase to come.
The health advisory level for uranium concentrations in New Brunswick drinking water has been decreased following recommendations from Health Canada. Traces of uranium to a maximum of 100 micrograms per litre, were considered safe in drinking water from domestic wells. As of the date of the announcement, the acceptable level has been dropped to 20 micrograms per litre.
The health effects of uranium are from its heavy metal properties rather than its radiological properties. There are about 25 sites around the province where the level of uranium exceeds the new level of 20 micrograms per litre. There are also several municipal or Crown operated water systems in New Brunswick in which the new health advisory level is exceeded. Source: CWWA
Heavy rainstorms, especially during hurricanes, can do much more than drown people and damage property. In the first (US) nationwide study of its kind, Johns Hopkins researchers announced that 68% of water-borne disease outbreaks reported over a 47-year period were preceded by precipitation events in the top 20% of volume for the affected watershed.
When storms produce more flow than storm sewers can handle, sewage systems often discharge untreated sewage directly into lakes, streams, and estuaries - especially when storm and sanitary sewers are combined. Most water-borne disease comes from -untreated sewage. In many outbreaks, however, the specific disease-causing germs and their ultimate source may never be identified. -
The new research could paint a gloomier picture of global climate change, which some researchers predict will increase the number of heavy-precipitation events. Along with bacteria and viruses, antibiotic-resistant organisms are spreading through watersheds, according to the US Society for Environmental Journalists electronic publication TipSheet.
In related research, the New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection has found that increased rainfall consistently leads to significant increases in potentially harmful organisms such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium.
The Canadian Water Network, a new Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE), was launched in November in Waterloo, Ontario.
The Canadian Water Network includes 175 researchers from 38 universities, 29 companies, and 40 government agencies who will undertake research aimed at ensuring Canada's leadership role in the management and sustainable use of water resources. In addition, the network will be studying the protection of human and aquatic ecosystems and applying new water technologies for continued economic growth.
The University of Waterloo will host the administrative centre of the new NCE.
NCEs are partnerships among industry, universities, and government. They are designed to develop the economy and improve quality of life for Canadians. These nation-wide networks connect research with industrial know-how and practical investment.
Industry Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council jointly manage the NCE Program.
Contact: www.nce.gc.ca.
Members of the International Council of Cruise Lines have adopted mandatory environmental standards for all of their cruise ships, based on principles that comply with international and US environmental laws.
The agreement marks a turnaround from the environmental violations of the past. One council member was handed a record $18 million criminal fine in July 1999, for dumping waste oil and hazardous chemicals into the sea.
To improve environmental performance, these cruise lines are now testing and installing wastewater treatment systems that discharge effluent of high quality. Effluents meeting these standards would not be subjected to strict discharge limitations, an advantage to the cruise companies. Each ICCL member line will integrate these industry standards into its internationally mandated Safety Management System which ensures compliance through internal and third party audits.
An alliance has been formed to work towards realizing the full potential of the engineering portion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The North American Alliance for Civil Engineering (NAACE) was created in order to enhance the resources available to civil engineers and related professionals in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
It was signed by leaders of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, the College of Mexican Civil Engineers, and the Mexican Republic College Federation of Civil Engineers. Together, these organizations represent more than 153,000 members.
Contact: www.asce.org/about/intlagree.cfm.
The water flushed into lakes and rivers by 15 Québec sewage treatment plants is often still 'acutely toxic' to fish and insects, says a federal-provincial study. The lingering toxic effects occur because people and industries insist on flushing toxins down the drain and spreading them on lawns and golf courses.
Environment Canada and Québec's Environment Ministry looked for dozens of known toxic chemicals and found most of them passing through the sewage treatment plants, which are designed to kill germs and remove solids, but not to neutralize toxic chemicals. Pesticides, industrial wastes, arsenic and metals all showed up in the water flowing into rivers, including the Ottawa, St. Lawrence and Saguenay.
In all, more than 85 percent of the sewage samples from all sources contained the following: ammonia, phosphorus, aluminum, arsenic, barium, mercury, PCBs, chlorinated dioxins and furans, surfactants (cleaning chemicals), polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other organic and inorganic wastes. As well, nearly all the wastewater samples fertilized the river, causing the growth of excess algae.
The report, Assessment of the Toxic Potential of Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant Effluents in Québec, is available at: http://slv2000.qc.ec.gc.ca/index_a.htm.