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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Beach Seine<br />
Beach seining activities were conducted at the Newman’s Brook downstream site (site 13), Courtenay<br />
Forebay (site 1) and the Inner Harbour downstream site (site 16). A beach seine <strong>of</strong> 9 x 1.5 m (9 mm stretch<br />
mesh) with a central collection bag was towed once for 3 minutes at a slow walking pace at each site.<br />
Results and discussion<br />
In the following sections, the water quality and fish community are presented, and key highlights are<br />
explored. The raw water quality data collected in the <strong>2018</strong> field season can be found in Appendix C. All<br />
historic or previous monitoring data can be found on Atlantic DataStream (www.atlanticdatastream.ca),<br />
on the ACAP Saint John website (www.acapsj.org) or by contacting the ACAP Saint John <strong>of</strong>fice.<br />
Marsh Creek <strong>Water</strong>shed<br />
Within this section, the Marsh Creek results are divided into two portions – analysis A and B, to correspond<br />
to two different historical datasets. In general, the Marsh Creek watershed has seen dramatic<br />
improvements since the completion <strong>of</strong> Harbour Cleanup in 2014; however, as a highly urbanized<br />
watershed it faces many development, encroachment, stormwater, and flooding issues that can now be<br />
focused on since the dumping <strong>of</strong> raw sewage has been ceased.<br />
Analysis A <strong>Water</strong> Quality Parameters<br />
The analysis A portion <strong>of</strong> the Marsh Creek monitoring is completed at two historical sites (upstream and<br />
downstream) that have been sampled dating back to 1993. This year, these sites were monitored five<br />
times over the summer field season for all field parameters, four times for fecal coliform and total<br />
suspended solids and three times for all lab parameters. To compare the data collected this year to<br />
previous datasets, an average <strong>of</strong> the sampling parameters over the timepoints was determined and can<br />
be found in Table 3.<br />
Table 3. Calculated averages (x) and standard deviations (SD) <strong>of</strong> water quality parameters measured for<br />
Marsh Creek Analysis A (upstream or US, and downstream or DS) from the <strong>2018</strong> field season.<br />
Site Temp (℃)<br />
pH<br />
DO<br />
(mg/L)<br />
Salinity<br />
(ppt)<br />
Fecal<br />
Coliforms<br />
(CFU/100mL)<br />
TSS<br />
(mg/L)<br />
Total<br />
Ammonia<br />
(mg/L)<br />
Free<br />
Ammonia<br />
(mg/L)<br />
Phosphate<br />
(mg/L)<br />
x SD x SD x SD x SD x SD x SD x SD x SD x SD<br />
US 18.9 3.7 7.6 0.2 9.4 1.1 0.07 0.02 1168 825 4.5 3.7 0.23 0.18 0.005 0.003 0.15 0.16<br />
DS 23.6 2.1 8.2 0.2 8.4 4.4 2.70 1.13 3646 3574 5.5 3.1 0.18 0.08 0.018 0.001 0.19 0.24<br />
While average dissolved oxygen levels are much higher than some <strong>of</strong> the historic data presented, they are<br />
at the lowest they have been since the 2014 field season (Figure 18). These results are likely due to an<br />
increase in the water’s temperature and generally very low flow over the sampling period (Canadian<br />
Council <strong>of</strong> Ministers <strong>of</strong> the Environment, 2017).<br />
23 | P age
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