The Challenges and Benefits of Maintaining a High Quality Municipal Groundwater Monitoring Network

Mike Fairbanks

In the proceedings of: GeoMontréal 2013: 66th Canadian Geotechnical Conference; 11th joint with IAH-CNC

Session: Groundwater Management I

ABSTRACT: Depending on the required objective a groundwater monitoring program can take many forms. In general, most programs are designed with a key objective in mind. However, municipalities must ensure their programs meet multiple objectives, each with their own set of unique requirements in terms of spatial and temporal resolution and the type of monitoring data that needs to be collected. In addition, the program needs to be flexible and broad in scope to anticipate future needs when unforeseen concerns arise. Over the years the Regional Municipality of York (York Region) has made significant investments in the construction, monitoring and maintenance of its groundwater monitoring network. Located in southern Ontario, York Region maintains a network of approximately 160 monitoring wells to support the delivery of safe drinking water to over a million residents. York Region has been faced with divergent drivers: to meet the drinking water demands but also ensure the supply is well protected from rapidly expanding urban boundaries. Over time, the program has had to adapt to provide adequate groundwater monitoring coverage to support multiple objectives. With more stringent regulatory requirements placed on municipalities, having strong data management and analysis is a vital objective. The need to have sufficient data to quickly assess production well efficiency and optimization assessments is also necessary to ensure continuous supply of drinking water. More recently, source water protection initiatives, monitoring areas of water quality concerns, groundwater modeling data requirements, resource evaluations, and private well and natural environment impact assessments are examples of the many objectives that shape the York Region program. Other program elements include regular review of network coverage to identify data gaps and redundant locations, annual well inspection and slug testing program, continuous water level monitoring, water quality sampling, and maintenance of data management tools for storage and interpretation of data. Despite the challenges of maintaining a high quality groundwater monitoring network, it is balanced by many benefits. Beyond the intended objectives of the program, monitoring data has been invaluable in assisting the Region with new project and regulatory requirements that could not have been completed without a dynamic approach. Examples include assessment of increased groundwater levels with the introduction of surface water to previously groundwater serviced areas, providing calibration data for regional flow models to meet new regulatory source water protection requirements and providing supporting data to properly assess potential impacts from Region construction projects.

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Cite this article:
Mike Fairbanks (2013) The Challenges and Benefits of Maintaining a High Quality Municipal Groundwater Monitoring Network in GEO2013. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Geotechnical Society.

@article{GeoMon2013Paper286,author = Mike Fairbanks,title = The Challenges and Benefits of Maintaining a High Quality Municipal Groundwater Monitoring Network,year = 2013}