​There has been a lot of traveling these past few months by lab members. 

Kelli Charbonneau was up in Sault Ste. Marie, ON, to work at the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) labs to process invertebrate samples from her field work in the Batchawana watershed.  Lots got done and there was some great help from the staff at CFS.  Thank you!

Jennifer Thera was in San Francisco at the US Geological Survey labs in Menlo Park to analyze her food web samples for selenium.  She worked in Robin Stewart's lab and packed a lot of analyses (and a side trip for whale watching) into her time in sunny California. 

​Karen has made several trips to Ottawa for NSERC scholarship and grant meetings (and some skating on the canal) and spent some time in Oslo to participate in discussions about a new project on e-waste in Tanzania and to give a seminar at the University of Oslo.  Here is a picture of the group she met with including her host Katrine Borga on the far right. 




​Most recently Karen was in Victoria, BC, with the Scientific Committee to plan the summer ASLO meeting.  The program is gearing up to be a great one and of course Victoria will be lovely in June.  This is some of the group working on session scheduling the old-fashioned, interactive way. 

Municipal wastewaters contain a diverse suite of contaminants (pharmaceuticals, personal care product additives, nutrients, organics, metals), some of which can affect the health of fish and other aquatic life living downstream of these discharges. Collectively these wastewaters also make up the largest total discharge by volume in Canada.  The Canadian Water Network has assembled a national panel of experts to review known and emerging contaminants in these wastewaters and opportunities to reduce their discharge to the environment.  I am looking forward to working with the team and to the meetings and discussions ahead.  It will be a challenging but critical task to ensure the most effective investments in wastewater treatment are made. For more on the objectives, panel members and timeline, click here.