Rebirth of Water 2018-2019
Continued water quality monitoring throughout the City of Saint John and the Greater Saint John area helps to gain insight into the aquatic habitats that these watercourses provide, as well as their safety for recreational use for humans. The watercourses that have had continuous monitoring this year include: Marsh Creek, Inner Harbour, Newman’s Brook, Caledonia Brook, Alder Brook, Hazen Creek, Taylor Brook, Salmon Creek and Mispec River. Additional sampling sites were added this year on the west side of the City, which include Mill Creek, Spruce Lake Stream, Walker Creek, Mosquito Cove, Manawagonish Creek, and Dominion Park. These new locations were added this year to more accurately portray the water quality of the city’s waterways as a whole. Overall, the watercourses included in this year’s sampling all continue to have the capability to provide sufficient aquatic habitats for various forms of aquatic life. There are several factors that potentially affect the water courses such as stormwater runoff, sanitary sewer overflows and riparian degradation. The stormwater runoff and riparian degradation as well as the hot, dry weather led to elevated temperatures and slightly decreased dissolved oxygen levels as compared to previous years. On average, most sites this year saw an increase in orthophosphate concentration when compared to previous data. At this time, there is no official guideline or recommendation for orthophosphate levels in place. The considerable improvements of water quality parameters for aquatic life seen in Marsh Creek since the completion of Harbour Cleanup in 2014 solidifies that the funding and resources put into the project were much needed. The most notable difference in the water quality is the dissolved oxygen concentrations, although lower in 2018 than 2017, they are still above the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment guideline recommended concentration of 6.5 mg/L on average at all the sites sampled.
Continued water quality monitoring throughout the City of Saint John and the Greater Saint John area helps to gain insight into the aquatic habitats that these watercourses provide, as well as their safety for recreational use for humans. The watercourses that have had continuous monitoring this year include: Marsh Creek, Inner Harbour, Newman’s Brook, Caledonia Brook, Alder Brook, Hazen Creek, Taylor Brook, Salmon Creek and Mispec River. Additional sampling sites were added this year on the west side of the City, which include Mill Creek, Spruce Lake Stream, Walker Creek, Mosquito Cove, Manawagonish Creek, and Dominion Park. These new locations were added this year to more accurately portray the water quality of the city’s waterways as a whole.
Overall, the watercourses included in this year’s sampling all continue to have the capability to provide sufficient aquatic habitats for various forms of aquatic life. There are several factors that potentially affect the water courses such as stormwater runoff, sanitary sewer overflows and riparian degradation. The stormwater runoff and riparian degradation as well as the hot, dry weather led to elevated temperatures and slightly decreased dissolved oxygen levels as compared to previous years. On average, most sites this year saw an increase in orthophosphate concentration when compared to previous data. At this time, there is no official guideline or recommendation for orthophosphate levels in place.
The considerable improvements of water quality parameters for aquatic life seen in Marsh Creek since the completion of Harbour Cleanup in 2014 solidifies that the funding and resources put into the project were much needed. The most notable difference in the water quality is the dissolved oxygen concentrations, although lower in 2018 than 2017, they are still above the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment guideline recommended concentration of 6.5 mg/L on average at all the sites sampled.
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covered with parafilm, and immediately placed into a dark space. After sitting for at least one hour<br />
(maximum <strong>of</strong> 24 hours), the samples were then placed in a spectrophotometer and percent<br />
transmittance, at 640 nm, was measured and recorded.<br />
To determine the ammonia concentration, a calibration curve (Appendix A) was constructed to represent<br />
the ammonia concentration in mg/L. A stock solution was prepared by dissolving 3.819 g <strong>of</strong> dried<br />
ammonium chloride in 1000 mL <strong>of</strong> deionized water volumetrically. This produces 1000 mg/L <strong>of</strong> NH 3N<br />
solution. A standard ammonium solution was prepared by diluting 1 mL <strong>of</strong> 1000 mg/L stock NH 3N solution<br />
into 100 mL <strong>of</strong> deionized water volumetrically to produce a 10 mg/L NH 3N solution. Continuing the serial<br />
dilution, 25 mL <strong>of</strong> 10 mg/L NH 3N solution was then diluted in 250 mL <strong>of</strong> deionized water volumetrically to<br />
prepare 1 mg/L NH 3N solution. This diluted standard solution was pipetted in amounts <strong>of</strong> 25, 20, 15, 10,<br />
5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 mL into a 125 mL Erlenmeyer flasks and topped up to a final volume <strong>of</strong> 50 mL. Standards<br />
were treated as samples in the above procedure and placed into a dark space for one hour. Percent<br />
transmittance, at 640 nm, was then measured and recorded (Figure 16). Absorbance versus Ammonia<br />
concentration was plotted to make a straight line passing through the origin to create the equation<br />
needed to calculate ammonia concentration (Appendix B) in collected samples.<br />
Figure 16. The colour development <strong>of</strong> standards for the Ammonia calibration curve.<br />
Data Loggers<br />
In addition to bi-weekly water quality sampling, the variation <strong>of</strong> water temperatures throughout the<br />
sampling season were analyzed at various watercourses using temperature loggers (EasyLog USB logger,<br />
EL-USB-1 model). The loggers were attached to cinder blocks and placed in various watercourses at the<br />
beginning <strong>of</strong> April <strong>2018</strong> (example in Figure 17). These loggers were left to collect data for seven months<br />
and were removed at the end <strong>of</strong> October.<br />
21 | P age
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