Water and Wastewater Treatment

Water and wastewater touch our lives on a daily basis, from the water we drink to the wastewater we produce. In Canada over 4.8 billion m³ of drinking water is produced on a daily basis, with more than 300 water treatment plants in operations to help meet the needs of a thirsty population.  Ensuring that water is safe to drink in Canada and globally is critical for human health and well-being and encompasses an interdisciplinary lens of technical and socio-political requirements for fulsome implementation.  Wastewater impacts human, aquatic, and biotic health across all geographies and communities. While many people may see wastewater as the treatment of polluted water from homes and industries, it also includes a multifaceted lens of physical, chemical and biological treatment, removal of emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals, microplastics, and PFAS, as well as the recovery of valuable products and bio-energy generation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater analyses for different variants of COVID-19 provided a valuable tool in predicting when infections and hospitalizations would increase in our communities which helped inform decision-makers to develop plans to address the needs of the public health systems.  Wastewater-based surveillance is a rapidly growing field of environmental engineering that has expanded towards the surveillance of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), Mpox and more recently is looking to become an important tool used to protect the world from pathogen X. Water and wastewater require skilled engineers and scientists in a globally complex world to meet the needs of today while adopting and developing new technologies and skillsets to adapt and combat the impacts of climate change. Join OCIENE today and help ensure a safer water world!