The Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations (WSER), developed under the Fisheries Act, came into force in 2012 to manage wastewater releases by systems that collect an average daily influent volume of 100 cubic metres or more. The WSER also does not apply to any wastewater system located in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and north of the 54th parallel in the provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. The WSER set national baseline effluent quality standards that are achievable through secondary wastewater treatment.
Under the WSER, owners or operators of wastewater systems discharging annual average daily effluent volumes greater than 2,500 m3 are required to determine and report on the acute lethality of the effluent.
The map below presents the percentage of acute lethality test failures for the wastewater systems in Canada that conducted at least one acute lethality test according to the standards of the Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations.
The map is available in both ESRI REST (to use with ARC GIS) and WMS (open source) formats. For more information about the individual reporting wastewater systems, datasets are available in either Excel or CSV formats.
Data from Quebec and Yukon
As of 2018, no acute lethality results from Quebec municipalities are available since an equivalency agreement is now in effect. As of 2015, no acute lethality test results for wastewater systems in the Yukon are available as an equivalency agreement in is effect.
More information on the wastewater sector including the regulations, agreements, contacts and resource documents is available at: https://www.canada.ca/wastewater