Hi all…The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) is looking for input into the draft Canadian Groundwater Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Environmental and Human Health for 101 contaminants of concern. It is available for public review and comment until January 10, 2020. The PDF can be directly downloaded here.

Bill

______________________________________________________

CANADIAN GROUNDWATER QUALITY GUIDELINES FOR THE PROTECTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND HUMAN HEALTH (November 2019)

DOCUMENT OVERVIEW “This document is divided into three sections: (1) a summary of the protocol used to derive these guidelines, (2) separate guideline tables for one hundred and one organic compounds and (3) appendices containing the substance-specific chemical property information that was used to derive the guidelines. Detailed guiding principles and guideline development processes are available in the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) protocols (CCME 2006; 2015).”

Document for Public Review and Comment Groundwater Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Environmental and Human Health

Draft Canadian Groundwater Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Environmental and Human Health for 101 contaminants of concern are available for public review and comment until January 10, 2020.

Groundwater quality guidelines are developed to maintain specific uses of groundwater and to protect receptors in environments that may directly or indirectly come into contact with contaminated groundwater due to contaminant migration. These guidelines are not intended to protect organisms living in aquifers, but rather to protect the uses of groundwater or downgradient receptors. Groundwater quality guidelines are primarily derived by using existing benchmarks and back-calculating a groundwater concentration, using fate and transport models, that will not result in an exceedance of the benchmark once the contaminant reaches the environment of concern.

In addition to reviewing and providing comments on the technical and scientific content of this document, please respond to the following questions:

  1. Is the supporting documentation in this package sufficient to meet your needs? Please comment on the credibility, transparency, reliability and reproducibility of the draft guidelines.
  2. Eighty-eight of the 101 draft Canadian groundwater quality guidelines have been designated as provisional to reflect the uncertainty and data gaps in the guideline development. Do you have concerns with using provisional guidelines?
  3. How useful is the format of the current document and guideline tables? Do you have any suggestions to better organize this document?

Please submit comments to:
Natalie James
Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment
360 – 123 Main Street
Winnipeg, MB    R3C 1A3
Email: njames@ccme.ca