Grant: Alliance Grants

The Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District (GVS&DD) discharges wastewater from 5 wastewater treatment plants directly or indirectly into the Strait of Georgia, a semi-enclosed oceanic waterway at the inshore end of the Salish Sea surrounded by about 10% of Canada's population. This wastewater contains organic substances of concern including endocrine-disruptive chemicals (EDCs), as well as metals like silver and cadmium which can be toxic in high concentrations. The basic questions for GVS&DD are: should they be worried about the effect of these substances in the Strait of Georgia, now or in the foreseeable future, and if so, what might be done about mitigating these effects? Answering these questions means addressing basic science issues about biological, chemical and physical transport processes for these substances in a coastal ocean area, and about processes leading to the bioaccumulation of these substances in marine food webs.Here we propose a project to quantify water column concentrations of EDCs discharged into the Strait, understand how and why regional ocean circulation and particle dynamics can cause environmental levels to change over space and time, determine the bioaccumulation as these substances move into higher trophic levels in the Strait, study whether or at what point the ambient concentrations may become of environmental concern, and determine the importance of the GVS&DD wastewater treatments plants as sources.