Toward a Watershed Monitoring Framework for the Toronto Region

WORKSHOP DESIGN AND STRUCTURE

Preparing for the Watershed Monitoring Workshop with the WQB

In preparation for the public workshop with the WQB, a pre-meeting was convened on April 12, 1999 with over 30 local stakeholders of the Don Watershed Regeneration Council (Don Council) and the Humber Watershed Alliance (Humber Alliance). The Honorable David Crombie, Chair Waterfront Regeneration Trust, addressed participants at the pre-meeting. This pre-meeting was held to provide local stakeholders with an understanding of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and the role and responsibility of the WQB. In addition, some preliminary recommendations were developed and subsequently presented to the WQB by Lois Griffin (Chair of the Humber Alliance) and Mark Wilson (Chair of the Don Council) at a reception held on the evening of May 11, 1999 at the Black Creek Pioneer Village. A summary of the preliminary recommendations is presented in Appendix 1.

In addition to developing preliminary advice for the WQB, considerable work on a watershed monitoring framework was undertaken to lay the foundation for the May 13^th public workshop with the WQB. The proposed watershed monitoring framework for the Toronto RAP area was initiated with the development of draft discussion papers on monitoring in each of three topic areas:

• water quality;
• water quantity; and
• aquatic habitat and species.

A series of focus groups were consulted during the development of the papers and a stakeholder workshop was held on April 21, 1999. The consultations included staff from local and regional municipalities, government agencies, academics, consultants and interest groups. The input received was used to develop the concept of the watershed monitoring framework presented at the May 13^th public workshop.

Watershed Monitoring Workshop

The May 13^th workshop began with a welcome from Craig Mather the Chief Administrative Officer of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and member of the IJC's Great Lakes Water Quality Board, and from Vic Shantora the Canadian Chairman of the Great Lakes Water Quality Board. Craig Mather and Suzanne Barrett from the Waterfront Regeneration Trust gave a brief overview of the status and progress of the Toronto and Region RAP (see Appendix 2 for the workshop program). They noted that the Toronto and Region RAP Team was initiated in 1987. In 1991, the RAP Team completed the Stage I report, which identified impaired uses and their causes. The Stage 2 Report (Clean Waters Clear Choices) was completed in 1994 and contains 53 recommendations for action to restore the polluted waterways and waterfront in Toronto and Region. The Toronto and Region RAP is now in a stage of implementation and action. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority is working closely with the Waterfront Regeneration Trust, Environment Canada, and Ontario Ministry of Environment on implementation of the Toronto and Region RAP under a Four-Party Memorandum of Understanding. The process of implementing the RAP, however, involves a much broader spectrum of players.

Next participants heard a presentation on the proposed watershed monitoring framework from Sonya Meek, Water Management Planner in the Resource Science Section of the Toronto Region Conservation Authority. Sonya Meek provided a review of the monitoring requirements in a watershed context and illustrated how an integrated Watershed Monitoring Network would fulfill the needs of RAPs as well as individual watershed and waterfront councils, and the municipalities in the area. The Watershed Monitoring Network would: provide necessary information to assess watershed/waterfront health; be efficient; and have agreed upon monitoring and reporting standards among the stakeholders. The development of the Watershed Monitoring Network is ongoing, and will continue to include direction and input from various agencies, municipalities, and the public. The monitoring indicators selected for the Watershed Monitoring Network will reflect a spectrum of environmental effects, stressors and management responses/activities. Biomonitoring indicators will form the "front line" by providing important information that integrates the environmental conditions in a watershed. The Watershed Monitoring Network will be made up of the collective efforts of monitoring agencies and groups which, in many cases, already carry out various monitoring activities. Target setting and reporting will be conducted on a watershed basis.

Following the overview of the watershed monitoring strategy, participants heard three presentations on specific monitoring approaches: biomonitoring; municipal monitoring; and algal community monitoring. Wolfgang Scheider of Ontario Ministry of Environment described two biomonitoring programs conducted by the Ministry of Environment in streams and lakes of the Toronto Area of Concern (AOC), and also summarized some of the results from the biomonitoring studies from the Great Lakes. The Sport Fish Contaminant Study analyses the fish tissue of all sizes of sport fish collected from the entire length of the Toronto waterfront, eight inland water body, and four stream sites in the AOC. Fish tissue is analyzed for mercury, PCBs, organic pesticides, and dioxins/furans. Results from Lake Ontario (including the Niagara River and St. Lawrence River) indicate that 57 % of sport fish have no consumption restrictions, 40 % have partial restrictions (4, 2 or 1 meal per month), and 3 % are completely restricted. Compared to the entire Great Lakes Basin, Lake Ontario has 10 % more partial consumption restrictions than the rest of the basin. In Ministry of Environment's Juvenile Fish Monitoring Program, juvenile fish are collected annually from a subset of approximately 10 of 43 sites in the Toronto RAP watersheds and analyzed for contaminants of concern. Juvenile fish are collected because they tend to remain in one area of the stream during their first year of life. Fish high in contaminant concentrations can therefore identify areas where elevated organics and metals exist within a watershed. PCB concentration in juvenile fish collected from the Humber River has significantly decreased from approximately 2,000 ng/g in 1975 to 100 ng/g in 1995. Ministry of Environment's biomonitoring programs are an integral part of "front-line" monitoring because they integrate the environmental condition of the watersheds and provide valuable information about the present state of the watershed.

Ted Bowering of the City of Toronto gave a presentation of municipal monitoring. Municipal monitoring varies between municipalities in the Toronto RAP area and encompasses a range of activities. Traditional monitoring focuses on the following uses: suitability for a specific use (e.g., beach closings, water supply); catching polluters (e.g., sewer out-fall monitoring); and performance monitoring (e.g., treatment plants, stormwater management systems). More recently, monitoring has been employed for research purposes, model calibration/development, and state of the environment reporting. Municipal monitoring assists the municipality in making decisions about the use of the land for a variety of purposes, including housing, transportation, recreation, and natural area reserves. In addition, monitoring addresses municipal concerns about the quality of life and sustainability in the area. The main challenges facing municipal monitoring is to find a balance between traditional monitoring, which utilizes grab samples, and long-term monitoring which would benefit from using indicators that integrate environmental conditions over time. Areas in which the City of Toronto could use assistance are identifying indicators, interpreting/analyzing monitoring results, and relating changes in indicators to management decisions. Ted Bowering noted that he did not envision the complete coordination or centralization of all monitoring activity in the watershed because different agencies have their own specific needs and objectives. He does believe, however, that stakeholders should act upon present opportunities for coordinated monitoring efforts and partnerships.

Marianne Douglas, an Assistant Professor of Geology from the University of Toronto, then gave a presentation which outlined the role of biological monitoring as an integrating indicator of environmental conditions in a watershed, and identified algae, along with fish and invertebrates as commonly used bio-indicators. Algae are excellent biomonitors for environmental assessments because they are common and widespread throughout all watersheds, they form the base of the food chain, there are hundreds of different species, and they are sensitive to environmental conditions, especially water chemistry. Algae have been successfully used to monitor the following aquatic conditions: nutrient surplus (i.e., eutrophication), turbidity and siltation, organic enrichments, high salinity, contamination by metals, and acidification. Professor Douglas identified several programs throughout the world that have utilized algae monitoring. The benefit of using algae as a biomonitor is its low cost relative to other traditional monitoring methods as well as the non-destructive collection methods of algae sampling. In addition, algae are often the first group of organisms to be impacted by shifts in physical and chemical conditions in a watercourse, including the introduction of pollutants at relatively low concentrations, because of their strong connection to basic water chemistry and their short life cycles. As such, algae can provide an "early warning system" of change in a watershed.

Facilitated round-table sessions were then used in the workshop to provide stakeholder feedback on the proposed indicators and suggest next action steps (see Appendix 2 for the workshop program). During lunch, participants heard a stimulating and provocative keynote address on the importance of a grassroots watershed RAP process by Jack Layton, Toronto Councillor and Co-Chair of the City of Toronto's Environmental Task Force. Later in the afternoon, workshop participants learned about the status of sediment quality in the Toronto Area of Concern and recent advances in data interpretation tools to help make sediment management decisions.

Duncan Boyd from Ontario Ministry of Environment highlighted the importance of a sediment quality assessment in an environmental monitoring program and the current sediment quality conditions in the Toronto Bay. Clean sediment provides healthy habitat for animals at the base of the aquatic food web, and ensures a diverse food source for fish and aquatic animals free from toxic effects. Contaminated sediment can kill or impair the growth and reproductive function of desirable benthic invertebrates. In addition, contaminants such as PCBs in sediment can bioaccumulate through the food web and lead to harmful concentrations in"top predators" such as fish-eating birds and humans.

Two beneficial use impairments in the Toronto RAP directly relate to sediment quality: restrictions on dredging activities, and degradation of benthos. Inner Toronto Harbour sediment conditions are "fair" with demonstrable improvement over the past 20 years for metals, particularly lead. Many areas exhibit concentrations of nutrients, metals, and PCBs/organochlorine pesticides below the "severe effect level", but above their "lowest effect level" (the concentration that can be tolerated by the majority of benthic organisms). An examination of the benthic community structure revealed that oligochaetes, typical of organically enriched areas, were the most common component of the community. Toxicity tests inhibited the growth of certain species, demonstrating that current water and sediment quality conditions are still limiting colonization by pollution sensitive species, however the absence of any lethal effect from exposure is a good indication that direct toxic effects on benthos are not an issue in the waterfront. The results provide no indication of a need to alter the present RAP strategy of source control.

Next, Trevor Pawson and Keith Somers of Ontario Ministry of Environment identified a need to evaluate sediment quality data simultaneously with biological and chemical data in order to draw conclusions on the ecological effects of sediment contamination. The various types of monitoring data were outlined and included sediment descriptors (e.g., physical characteristics, metal and organic concentration), and biological descriptors (e.g., bioassays, benthic community structure). Various methods for linking sediment attributes were described, and the Mantel test was applied to data from Toronto Harbour. The statistical methods used to analyze the data matrices of the Mantel test worked well with varying numbers of sites and variables, and successfully removed the confounding effects of sediment particle size. In Toronto Harbour, the benthic community structure and the bioassay matrices were correlated with sediment particle size and metal concentrations. Although the test successfully demonstrated that statistical methods do exist to link large chemical and biological data matrices together and draw defensible conclusions on the ecological effects of sediment contamination, this should be thought of as only one step in the decision toward the need to remediate. Whether or not to remediate must be decided with a complete risk assessment.

The sediment portion of the program concluded with:

• an overview of the work of the Great Lakes Water Quality Board's Sediment Priority Action Committee by Kelly Burch of Pennsylvania's Office of the Great Lakes; and
• a summary of key advice in applying analytical tools to make sediment management decisions by Gail Krantzberg of Ontario Ministry of Environment.

Gail Krantzberg outlined a decision-making process that could be applied for making sediment management decisions beyond source control. The decision making elements which affect sediment management actions include: lethal/sublethal chronic effects, bioaccumulation potential, the severity of ecological effects, type of contaminants, benthic communities, nature/extent of fish tumours, human health risk, fish and wildlife risk, physical stability of deposits, control of contaminants at source, economics, the social and legal circumstances, and available technologies. Equally important to the collection of data is sufficient attention be placed on thorough and comprehensive interpretation of the data. The use of minimally disturbed "reference sites" for comparison with test site data is an approach that could be used consistently across jurisdictions to determine the severity of environmental effects. The community structure of the test sites should be comparable to the reference sites if contaminants are not exerting ecological stress. An evaluation of the severity of the ecological stress along with a risk assessment and consideration of the decision making elements will provide a basis for sediment management decision making.

The May 13^th workshop concluded with a facilitated plenary discussion of how the WQB and IJC can assist in bringing these issues to the attention of federal and provincial governments. Over 100 people participated in the workshop (see Appendix 3 for complete list of registrants).