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Canadian ground water quality guidelines available for public review and comment

Winnipeg – A draft version of the Canadian Groundwater Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Environmental and Human Health for 101 contaminants of concern is available for public review and comment until Jan. 10, 2020.

Ground water quality guidelines are developed to maintain specific uses of ground water and to protect receptors in environments that may directly or indirectly come into contact with contaminated ground water due to contaminant migration, according to the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment website.

The Canadian Groundwater Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Environmental and Human Health are not intended to protect organisms living in aquifers, but rather to protect the uses of ground water or downgradient receptors. Ground water quality guidelines are primarily derived by using existing benchmarks and back-calculating a ground water 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, the council is looking for responses 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 ground water 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?

Comments should be submitted to:

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