Author(s)

Nadine Benoit¹, Alice Dove², Debbie Burniston², Duncan Boyd¹

¹Environmental Monitoring and Reporting Branch, Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, Ontario, Canada.
²Water Quality Monitoring and Surveillance Division, Science and Technology Branch, Environment Canada, Ontario, Canada.

Project Trackdown is an investigative environmental program aimed at tracking sources of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination in Great Lakes tributaries. The program uses a multimedia weight of evidence approach for identifying sources of PCBs to the environment. PCB concentrations in environmental media (sediment, water, suspended sediment and soil), passive samplers and/or exposed biota (mussels, young-of-the-year fish and benthic invertebrates) are used in combination to evaluate bioavailability and identify local anomalies within a tributary. These lines of evidence can be assessed with simple chemometric techniques and fingerprinting of PCB congener profiles, and, combined with anecdotal information such as land use history and tributary alterations, may be used to identify ongoing and locally controllable sources of PCBs to the Great Lakes. The program was successful at developing environmental triggers to differentiate potential source areas from background PCB conditions in urban areas, allowing efforts to focus on identifying active ongoing sources of PCB contamination. Project Trackdown has been carried out in three tributaries to Lake Ontario (Cataraqui River, Etobicoke Creek and Twelve Mile Creek) and two tributaries that flow into the Detroit River (Turkey Creek and Little River). Local ongoing PCB sources have been identified in four projects, leading to abatement or remediation measures. As a collaborative initiative between the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Environment Canada, Project Trackdown has successfully identified several PCB sources leading to substantial cleanup efforts aimed ultimately at reducing PCB contamination to the Great Lakes.

Source Tracking, PCBs, Great Lakes Tributaries

Benoit, N. , Dove, A. , Burniston, D. and Boyd, D. (2016) Tracking PCB Contamination in Ontario Great Lakes Tributaries: Development of Methodologies and Lessons Learned for Watershed Based Investigations. Journal of Environmental Protection, 7, 390-409. doi: 10.4236/jep.2016.73035.