WCW24

Buildings across Canada typically use 50% to 95% of centrally treated water for non potable purposes. This is typically irrigation, toilets, washing machines, cooling towers and process water. Which provides a significant opportunity to collect and reuse various onsite waters for these non potable purposes. These onsite waters can be rainwater, stormwater, AC condensate, foundation drainage, grey water or process water. By effectively reusing onsite water with a One Water approach and valuing all water sources we can turn this nuisance onsite water into an assets fostering water conservation and sustainability. Let's discuss how we can successfully reuse onsite water and discuss how we can ensure the water is treated to meet the "fit for purpose". Together we can reshape the water resource landscape in Canada. Turning onsite nuisance water into a valuable water resource.

Recent trends of climate change impacts have been gesturing that water reuse may become a 'compulsory' rather than an 'arbitrary' water source in the next few decades in Western Canada. Recurring droughts, receding glaciers, drying streams, and shrinking groundwater sources are sending alarming signals about water availability and security, indicating that reclaimed water may have to become inevitably an integral source of non-potable and potable water supply in this part of Canada. Many municipalities, regions, and districts around the world have been through similar situations (e.g., drought conditions threatening local and regional water sources); to increase their water supply resiliency, some have been practicing recycled water use for years to different extents and have developed regulations and guidelines pertinent to their territories' needs and conditions. Florida started water reuse in 1960s. California has had the reuse regulations for over 100 years (first adopted in 1918) for non-potable reuse and has just adopted the direct potable reuse regulations in the end of 2023. Texas was the first state in the United States that adopted the regulations allowing direct potable reuse. In 1992, a National Water Quality Management Strategy (NWQMS) involved Australian and New Zealand governments jointly developing national water quality policies, processes, and guideline documents; these national guidelines served as a baseline for the states to develop their own guidelines for the use of different qualities of recycled water for specific purposes, incorporated into regulations as necessary. Currently in Canada, no federal or provincial policies or regulations are available governing water reclamation and reuse, including Saskatchewan (SK), Alberta (AB), and Ontario (ON). AB has a Guidelines for Residential Rainwater Harvesting Systems since 2010 and has recently published Guidelines for Residential Rainwater Harvesting Systems in 2021. British Columbia (BC) Reclaimed Water Guidelines serves as a companion document for the BC Municipal Wastewater Regulations; as it is practically functioning as part of the regulations, it makes BC the only province with a document pertaining to reuse regulations. The limited number of available guidelines and almost no regulation gets one thinking whether Western Canada would be ready from regulations and guidelines standpoint for the time comes when reclaimed water use will have to be integrated into our water/wastewater infrastructure and management system. While all the existing international regulations exist to be drawn from for the existing and future projects in Western Canada, regional guidelines and regulations should be developed or expanded, to speak into and account for regional conditions, including existing and alternative water sources matching the region's profile, public perception for reuse in the region, evolving climate conditions in the region, etc. This abstract (and the expanded discussion in the associated presentation/talk) tends to act as a torch for shedding light on the importance of initiating discussions about water reuse topic in Canada and developing Canadian recycled water use legislations and regulations to proactively prepare for our national and provincial future water needs.

Standard engineering practices aim to provide a reliable engineering design that allows water and wastewater pipeline tolerate standard loading conditions. Reliability threats such as construction and maintenance errors, cyclic fatigue, transient pressures, corrosion control, and extreme loading conditions, remain a challenge for pipeline owners. It is becoming increasingly apparent that unavoidable failures are occurring due to the magnitude and intensity of wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and extreme weather conditions; thereby, emphasizing the need for a resilient and sustainable performance-based engineering practice to ensure that impacts are minimized on pipelines, recovery is quick, and functionality is maintained in the long term while considering the consequences for society, the economy, and the environment. In this presentation, we will define pipeline resilience, and discuss design, construction, and asset management strategies for balancing engineering design practices that ensure the reliability, resilience, and sustainability of future water and wastewater pipelines. This is would help us navigate a future full of environmental, social, and economic uncertainties.

There has been a proliferation of IoT (Internet of Things) devices that are used by municipalities to collect data from Collections Systems, including data from Pump Stations, flow meters, level meters and rain gauges. Integrating this Collection System data with data from numerous other sources is part of the desire by Municipalities to create “Smart” Cities, but that integration has proved to be a daunting task. This presentation will therefore focus on what is available and can be done today, to collect flow/level/rain data, then send it to a cloud-environment where it can be analyzed, which leads to informed decisions, whether on a near-real time basis for operational control, or for more long-term planning by engineers for infrastructure decisions. Topics discussed will include: - Goal of “Smart” Cities, and obstacles to date. - Current monitoring technologies for Flow, Level and Rain meters. - Data collection methods. - Cloud-based software platforms for Data Storage, Analysis and Machine Learning applications. - Sharing data with other software platforms via the use of API's and other transfer methods. - Uses of Collections Systems flow, level and rain data for Operations and for Engineering.

In recent years, the escalating challenges posed by more frequent and intense intermittent droughts have heightened concerns about water supply in the Western Canadian Provinces. As part of the development of Manitoba's Water Management Strategy, stakeholders emphasized a pivotal measure to improve water supply availability: the initiation of a sector-by-sector analysis of water needs. This analysis is vital for informed decision-making in meeting basic human needs, sustaining healthy ecosystems, ensuring food security, generating energy, and fostering economic growth. In alignment with this strategy, Manitoba Environment and Climate Change engaged Associated Engineering to conduct a resiliency assessment on 100 water systems across the province. The objective was to gain a deeper understanding and document risks within the municipal water supply sector (municipalities, water cooperatives, etc.) for effective drought planning and response. The presentation will offer insights into the project methodology, the engagement of 100 Public Water Systems through a comprehensive questionnaire and interview process, and the presentation of high-level overview findings from the assessment.

Inner City neighbourhoods are often some of the oldest developments in a large metropolitan area. Due to the vintage of the area, their drainage infrastructure is often limited in it's performance and does not meet modern standards. The often do not contain any defined overland drainage paths. Implementation of drainage upgrades are often difficult due to the retrofit nature of the setting: set underground drainage inverts, utility congestion, poor record information, and mature trees. Stantec was retained to provide engineering consultant services to EPCOR for the design of a flood mitigation project in the mature Parkdale neighbourhood of Edmonton, including sewer separation and a dry pond, and had to over come many of the difficulties with inner City drainage upgrades. The Parkdale Dry Pond and Sewer Separation Project has many components that showcase EPCOR's commitment to providing storm water management services that protect communities long term. The Parkdale neighborhood was identified through EPCOR's Stormwater Integrated Resource Plan (SIRP) as being exposed to significant health and safety, environmental, social and financial risks caused by stormwater impacts. This project aims to reduce the risk posed to this community through separating targeted combined sewers into dedicated sanitary and storm sewers, installing a dry pond supplemented with underground storage, and installing absorbent landscaping and low-impact development in the area to provide stormwater management for varying rainfall conditions. 2D modeling was completed under a variety of storm scenarios to better understand the areas of surface ponding concern and sewer surcharge. This in combination with EPCOR's data on floods reported by residents played a part in selecting the location of the dry pond and the areas targeted for sewer separation. The dry pond will be located within an existing Parkdale school field (constructed in 1912) and the decision was made to incorporate underground storage as this would allow the dry pond bottom to be raised up and create a larger space for community activities and recreation. New storm sewers in the area direct surface runoff first to the underground storage system before surcharging into the dry pond. For the majority of storm events, runoff will be stored in the underground storage system and only in very large events will it surcharge into the dry pond. This combined storage system then outlets to a deep existing storm trunk at a controlled release rate to damped the impacts to the downstream system. It is anticipated that there will be new residential development downstream of this site and by creating this storage opportunity, capacity in the storm trunk will be made available for these future developments. In the vicinity of the dry pond and sewer separation, absorbent landscaping was installed in public boulevards to help manage the road runoff from smaller storm events (approximately the first 17mm of rainfall) and will be planted with shrubs and grasses. Minimal ponding will be allowed in these facilities and a primary function will be the storage of runoff in the soil media and the plants themselves.