Karen Béchard and Meggen Janes, PEng, (Ontario) will present “Climate Resilient Brownfield Remediation” at Remediation Technologies Symposium East (RemTech East) 2023 at the Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on May 31, 2023.

Karen is a Project Scientist with more than 13 years of experience focused on risk assessment and toxicology. Her areas of expertise include human health and ecological risk assessment and toxicological review, evaluation of risk management measures, and data quality assessments. As a toxicologist, she often reviews potential impacts to environmental receptors at points of compliance, and her work is integral to teams who characterize natural carbon sources and selenium and nitrate reduction in mining bioremediation treatment systems.

Meggen is a Principal Environmental Engineer with more than 25 years of environmental consulting experience focused on forensic analysis, risk assessment, permitting, remediation, monitoring, and soil management. Her work often involves managing sediment and excess soil, supporting litigation, and assessing and remediating environmental impacts at complex sites. She has worked on some of Canada’s largest contaminated sites.

A conference hosted by the Environmental Association of Alberta (ESAA) and the Ontario Environment Industry Association (ONEIA), RemTech East focuses on remediation projects in eastern Canada, including brownfields, industrial sites, mining, and other government projects. The event is held every other year in Ontario.

With more than 200 member companies, ESAA provides publications and conferences that support environmental professionals. An Ontario-based business association, ONEIA creates connections between people who work in environmental technology, product and service companies, law firms, investment and insurance companies, universities, governments, and related fields to help them address pressing environmental problems.

How climate resilient is your remediation and risk management design? Wherever you are in Canada, there are signs of climate change: record-high Lake Ontario water levels, super rainstorms in Montreal, heat waves and forest fires in British Columbia, flooding on the Bow River in Alberta, and the list goes on. We’ll explore how these temporal changes impact brownfield remediation. We don’t often think about emergency preparedness in remediation design because our systems tend to be based on long-term performance. Several case studies will be used as examples of remediation and risk management failures from extreme events. We’ll explore real outcomes from extreme events and what-if scenarios during typical remediation. In remediation and risk assessment planning, future conditions may differ from historic ranges. It is important to assess your brownfield portfolio for vulnerability; a site or project is not always vulnerable in its entirety, but there may be aspects or key components of vulnerability. Brownfield remediation projects often move through risk assessment, remedial-option evaluation, remediation, and long-term monitoring. Each step of the process can include steps to manage uncertainty and climate risks. Certain risk assessment factors are more sensitive to influences from climate change, and the impact of these factors on risk modeling and risk reduction can influence risk management design. Remediation starts with remedy selection; we will discuss how remediation option evaluation (i.e., feasibility studies) can be expanded to consider impact of climate and adaptability of the remedy to temperature, precipitation, wind and wildfires. We will also discuss how extreme climate events may affect long-term monitoring programs and monitored natural attenuation. Recommended changes to industry standard practices are needed to manage your brownfield remediation and plan for resiliency.

More Information

About the event: RemTech East 2023
About ESAA: ESAA
About ONEIA: ONEIA
For consultation on brownfield remediation and climate resilience, contact Meggen Janes at mjanes@geosyntec.com.
Learn more about Meggen Janes, PEng: Meggen Janes
Learn more about Karen Béchard: Karen Béchard