How can we measure progress of water/wastewater asset management and maintenance across municipalities in Alberta?

Alberta Municipalities’ 300 members represent municipalities where 85% of Albertans live. We undertake advocacy efforts at the direction of our members. The maintenance of water and wastewater treatment facilities in light of changing federal and provincial regulations, and limited resources continues to be an area of focus. We are currently reviewing our current water policies to standardize regulations, infrastructure, and technologies for use in large and small municipalities throughout the province.

What role will biological processes play to be effective as we move forward with the next large scale remediation challenge of PFAS/PFOS and AFF?

Whilst Carbon/resin technologies seem to be prevalent the moment there are challenges around destruction of PFAS/PFOS and AFF( cleaning) going forward.

We continue to see tighter limits in water being introduced particularly in the US with this and the ban on incineration. Are aggregation technologies developing in regards to onsite remediation effective? Which destruction technologies are worthy of further research before a move to full scale.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/defense-department-hits-the-brakes-on-pfas-incineration/

Taking a global lens, where are current best practices to be found in market based approaches in water pricing and sustainable management of resources?

The distribution and management of freshwater resources are generally heavily subsidized. While it is agreed that this subsidy leads to mismanagement of resources, it is unclear how to quantify the link between market-based approaches pricing and better management.

We are trying to better understand how water management bodies consider the pricing of water in their water management approaches?

Further, to what degree do implicit or explicit subsidies affect the management of water resources? Can this be quantified?

Which companies and technologies are ready for export for the US Midwest Market place? What market sectors and solutions will these technologies supply?

As the Trade Commissioner for Clean Tech in Chicago and also the North American lead for Water, we help Canadian firms export, and find opportunities to reach new markets.

From a whole life cycle perspective, how sustainable are cooling towers fed by treated and reused rainwater?

Cooling towers are a predominant method of building cooling in urban centers and are significant potable water consumers. As cities progress toward a “sponge” concept to divert rain and stormwater away from their combined sewer systems through development of onsite water reuse programs, cooling towers present an opportunity to significantly increase the volume of water that can be evaporated and therefore diverted from the sewer. However, cooling towers could be phased out over time because they are not seen as a low-carbon cooling option. How do these competing goals trade off in a life cycle analysis?

What are the research challenges and opportunities to integrate monitoring and modeling approaches to improve climate change adaptation planning under the growing stormwater management problems in urban areas?

Stormwater runoff from urban areas can adversely impact the water quality of receiving waters and can contribute large amounts of phosphorus and other contaminants. The contribution of phosphorus from urban areas in the Great Lakes Basin has not been evaluated to the same extent as from agricultural areas. Currently, LID practices, such as porous pavements, biorientation cells, green roofs, and other similar practices, are gaining popularity in reducing storm runoff quantity and improving water quality issues in urban areas. LID practices aim to address flood risk by delaying runoff peaks during storms, and by reducing runoff volume. The focus of LID approaches is to manage runoff at the source. Although a range of watershed modeling and monitoring approaches have been applied in warm climates to identify sources of phosphorus and other contaminants in urban watersheds and to assess the effectiveness of stormwater management practices and LIDs, very few studies have conducted and used models to evaluate and simulate water quality in urban watersheds under the types of climate conditions typical for Ontario. Further, climate change is resulting in more extreme temperatures, weather, droughts and flooding, and thus, posing a greater challenge to urban stormwater management. Monitoring and modeling approaches are widely used to support urban stormwater management. The existing models seem to have limitations to fully represent the current stormwater management systems and simulate various processes.

As many urban centres in Canada densify, what are some requirements for multi-residence buildings, and townhouse complexes that could be included in the Ontario Building Code to ensure re-use/recycle water (i.e greywater use)?

.

What is the treatability relationship between the characteristics of pathogens (namely bacteria and bacteriophages) found in domestic sewage and the nitrifying/denitrifying bacteria used in wastewater treatment? How is treatment impacted?

.

How can organizations better implement research findings into their operations?

Many organizations undertake research activities, however there is a gap in applying these research findings into their everyday operations. What are some best practices and approaches that small and medium sized organizations can implement to ensure that their processes are state of the art and are evidence-based?

What tools can be used to scale down products and services for smaller water management agencies.

Many small and medium sized municipalities and water management agencies struggle with vendors as their products/services are designed for larger enterprises. What are some recommendations or tools that can be used to implement these products/services into their operations? Since vendor products / services are not scaled down for smaller agencies, collecting data in multiple formats for parameters like water flow rate and energy consumption can be difficult, and many data formats are not standardized across products / services.

What are the consequences of diverting biosolids to landfills on the environment and for climate change?

Biosolids are the byproduct of municipal wastewater treatment and also are known as sewage sludge. Many municipalities divert their biosolids to landfills. We are interested in learning the economic feasibility of this practice, the potential for generating greenhouse gases, and possible reuse of biosolids as fertilizer or in composting.

What novel technologies could support low energy treatment of dissolved organic compounds in Oil Sands Process Water at oil sands mining operations?

Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) Water Environmental Priority Area Steering Committee has identified a need for low energy technologies to treat dissolved organic compounds present in Oil Sands Process Water (OSPW). They are seeking improvement to existing or new technologies to improve environmental performance in the mineable oil sands industry. Generally the proposed technology will be of two types – Once through Treatment or In Pond Treatment and will work in northern climates, be a low energy system requiring little or no operator or maintenance interaction, be able to treat 0.5-5 Mm3year of OSPW, the effluent must be acutely nontoxic and pass acute bioassays (sufficient acid extractable organics removed), and produces a treated effluent of a specified quality. (More information can be found in the attached document.)

Why do we still use chemical and not biological sensors to monitor processes that are intrinsically biological in nature?

The design of wastewater treatment processes is based on biological parameters such as kinetic uptake rates or biological oxygen demand. However, real-time monitoring of such processes is limited to chemical and physical parameters. This discrepancy results in high uncertainty to address toxic shock or other treatment inefficiencies.

How can the industry incentive, promote the sharing of data to improve treatment efficiency and results?

The wastewater industry is very protective of their data, typically locking it in their own SCADA. This impedes novel data exploration.
SENTRY is a novel real-time biological sensor that is demonstrating its value, but it is a piece of the data solution. The integration and then the sharing of datasets is needed to allow companies to develop novel ways to utilize the data to create client value.

What is state-of-the-art in real time anaerobic digestion control systems, considering the existed lag between the reactor response and variable input characteristics.

AD systems are using wide range of anaerobic microbial communities to digest organic matter and produce a range of value added products including but not limited to biogas and fatty acids. Although AD is commonly used to treat organic waste, it shows sensitivity to fluctuations/imbalances in the influent that can affect reactor stability. A solution is to use extensive monitoring/controlling systems to overcome this challenge. This questions mainly aim to bring attention to the advance control strategies that might be impactful in this regard.

What tools, methods, or equipment are available to collect real-time water quality data? These tools should balance requirements for low cost of maintenance, data collection efficiency and ease of use.

We’re a community-based water monitoring group that’s looking to expand the types of data points we collect around water quality. We currently test for E.coli using Colilert in-house labs and Water Rangers’ test kits to test for other baseline water quality parameters. One of the biggest inhibitors of our work is the lack of affordable real-time monitoring tech that would help us get better data.

What are some of the most cost-effective technologies/processes that can treat municipal biosolids into high value byproducts?

Biosolids are solid organic matter recovered from the sewage treatment process. Effective management of biosolids serves as a strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by providing renewable energy, reducing use of fossil fuels and energy-intensive fertilizers, and stimulating carbon sequestration in soils. For instance, treated biosolids application to agricultural land reduces reliance on synthetic fertilizer, improves soil holding structure, and raises water holding capacity. By using biosolids in agricultural application, synthesis of commercial fertilizers and associated energy use is avoided.
Beneficial use of biosolids offset the carbon impact of mining and transporting mineral fertilizers from Russia, Morocco and the United States. In addition to this, beneficial reuse products are sustainable whereas some mineral fertilizers, particularly Phosphorus, are in finite supply and their costs increasing.
Biosolids not only improves soil chemical and biological fertility but because they contain substantial levels of non-degradable carbon, it can lock up carbon in the soil for longer periods. There is increasing governmental pressure to phase out disposal of biosolids at landfills and to continue to implement strict laws surrounding biosolids handling and disposal.

Given storms are more frequent and changing, what is the appropriate return period for a design storm event in our ever-changing climate for long term infrastructure planning in GTA?

How can we be adaptive to this changing circumstances given the context of long range planning and cost of new infrastructure?

There seems to be a lack of information on how climate models consider lake effect and how its influence on weather will change. How should municipalities build resiliency into the built wastewater infrastructure for regions impacted by Lake effect as the climate changes?

Designing for fire storage volumes leads to ever increasing problem with water quality as the climate warms. How can municipalities better design water infrastructure to reduce water usage and still maintain the service levels for fire protection?

Water equity and livability has been promoted by the US Alliance through a One Water framework. What are some opportunities to maximize community benefits of water and wastewater solutions in the Canadian context?