Join us for an exciting talk by Albanie Douglas on PFAS in Source Water, Preparing for New Regulations (Please register here to secure your spot) at our new Morwick Groundwater Research Centre, 360 College Avenue E, Guelph Ontario.
The City of Guelph is the largest Canadian city to depend almost exclusively on groundwater as a drinking water source. While the City’s management of their drinking water source aligns with the requirements of Ontario’s Clean Water Act (2006), this Act to date does not explicitly regulate PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances).
In August 2024, Health Canada (HC) finalized their Drinking Water Objective (DWO) at a concentration orders of magnitude lower than the previous federal drinking water guidelines and screening values. As the provinces have been working with the federal government to develop approaches for regulating PFAS in drinking water, it is expected that Ontario (and potentially other provinces) will soon release updated guidelines for PFAS in drinking water, which may align with the new DWO. Given the anticipated decrease in the PFAS guideline, the ubiquitous presence of these chemicals, the City of Guelph recognized the potential for unplanned capital expenditures (i.e., new drinking water treatment facilities). As such, the City decided to pro-actively undertake a screening approach to evaluate the potential for PFAS concentrations in their source water to exceed the HC DWO. This work was completed as part of the City’s risk management and capital planning efforts.
This presentation will explore the process by which screening effort was completed, including the risk evaluation completed for each supply well, the approach applied to identify and select monitoring wells for inclusion in the program, and the unique protocol developed to support collecting representative samples from deep municipal monitoring wells. It will outline how the approach aligns with the Source Water Protection framework, review the learnings and recommendations that have been derived from the program, and provide perspective to other municipalities and drinking water providers in Canada regarding the options and approaches for preparing for regulatory and policy changes related to PFAS.
Presenter: Albanie Douglas, M.Sc., P.Geo.
Albanie Douglas is a Hydrogeologist and Risk Management Inspector (RMI) for the Sourcewater Protection Program with the City of Guelph. Albanie completed her Masters of Science at the University of Waterloo studying contaminant hydrogeology. She worked in private sector consulting for over 16 years prior to joining the City in 2021, and developed extensive experience in contaminant transport, remediation, water supply, and more recently source water protection.
