Development of Groundwater Monitoring Requirements for Alberta Kraft Pulp Mills, 1998 Environmental Conference Proceedings

The Alberta kraft pulp industry, through the Alberta Forest Products Association (AFPA) and AGRA Earth & Environmental Limited (AEE), in cooperation with Alberta Environmental Protection (AEP), developed a revised groundwater monitoring strategy for Alberta kraft pulp mills. Previously, each of the four Alberta kraft mills was required to monitor groundwater with compliance wells in accordance with their individual mill operating licences. The compliance monitoring had provided a detailed groundwater history of each mill site and identified primary contaminant source areas. It was felt that the continuation of monitoring using detailed analyses was not necessary to detect changes in chemistry due to contamination from the source areas or mill facility types. Therefore, it was proposed that the compliance groundwater monitoring programs could be reduced to incorporate a discrete number of indicator parameters for each primary contaminant source area (i.e. each mill working area), while not compromising the objectives of the monitoring programs.