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It should come as no surprise that wastewater operators continue to be plagued by non-flushables on a daily basis. Dental floss, personal care products, paper…

The Duffin Creek Water Pollution Control Plant was supposed to enhance phosphorus removal when an expansion was completed in 2013. Built by the province in…

Urban flooding—increasingly prevalent with climate change—causes extensive economic, health, social, and environmental issues. Internationally, jurisdictions including Canadian municipalities are establishing stormwater utilities to mitigate the…

On July 8, 2012, Environment Canada published the Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations (WSER) under the Fisheries Act, a set of national wastewater effluent quality standards…

While Canada is becoming increasingly urbanized, between 19 and 30 per of the population still lives in either rural or small-town areas. These areas face…

Elimination of long-standing provincial funding in the mid-1990s led the County of Oxford in Southwest Ontario to develop its own funding support program for existing…

Rural communities, especially those with 1,000 residents or fewer, face a number of challenges when it comes to drinking water, including aging water infrastructure, limited…

Public-private partnerships (P3s) are still a relatively new concept in Canada, and employing them to deliver water and wastewater projects can be confusing for the…

Properly maintained water and wastewater systems underpin our quality of life. Most Canadians are unaware of the poor condition of these systems and the risks…

How often do you find yourself engaging in deep dialogue about systems with acquaintances, colleagues, or clients? When engaging in systems talk, we often notice…

The debate over the best form of excavation—open-cut versus trenchless technology—rages on. This debate is perplexing because an electrician is never asked which screwdriver they…

The increasing pressures of population growth, pollution, and a changing climate, coupled with strong demands for more local control, are making it increasingly apparent that…

Winter was at full throttle in 1993 when Colleen Cooney opened her daily newspaper and learned the City of Orillia closed one of its wells…

Saskatchewan’s economy has been growing at a feverish pace the past few years on the pillars of agriculture, mining, and oil-and-gas development. Although growth has…

It has been a tough five years for the water industry. Prior to 2008’s financial crisis, the companies providing water technologies and services were flying…

The Capital Regional District’s (CRD) attempt to build a Vancouver Island wastewater treatment plant has become a bureaucratic debacle as messy as the sewage it…

Canada’s water challenges and the ways provinces and territories address those challenges can be so similar yet entirely unique. Each jurisdiction’s positions on issues of…

Depending on where you are, it may be getting harder to buy a bottle of water. In response to concerns over the environmental, economic, and…

The size of the Yukon’s Peel Watershed is often compared to New Brunswick or Scotland, but the enormity of more than 67,000 square kilometres of…

With the 2013 Calgary and Toronto floods still fresh in our minds, and the bone-chilling cold of the polar vortex lingering well into spring, Canadians…

Community wastewater treatment plants and botanical gardens generally don’t have all that much in common. One is a noisy industrial facility while the other is…

What happens when data streams from an intensely instrumented watershed are combined with next-generation analytics in a high-powered computing environment? The answer is an unprecedented…

When it comes to water perception and management, the public is the chief driver of change. Unfortunately, a shocking number of Canadians appear to be…

Like many jurisdictions, Ontario is working to ensure the financial and environmental sustainability of municipal water, wastewater, and stormwater systems. While “doing more with less”…