Lauren Halliwell
Ph.D. Candidate
Civil Engineering
Queen's University
2020 - Present
Supervisor(s): Pascale Champagne, Geof Hall
Research Project: Modelling wastewater stabilization ponds in the face of climate change
If wastewater is not managed appropriately there are detrimental effects on the entire ecosystem. Wastewater is a complex mixture of human biological waste. When this complex mixture is improperly treated there is a potential high risk of toxins leaching into both drinking and recreational water in all water sources. Consequently, human health is negatively affected by the widespread increase in diseases and illnesses. Additionally, wastewater causes environmental degradation and inadvertently inflicts harm on the plant and animal biodiversity. An example of a water treatment system are Wastewater Stabilization Ponds (WSP). It is a significant and innovative approach in order to utilize natural decompositional wastewater treatment systems to breakdown and treat wastewater in an economically feasible way for small scale communities. A demand for WSP research is a critical reveal of the emerging climate changes which is a major stressor, particularly in small-scale communities. The goal of Lauren's work is to demonstrate the efficacy of wastewater stabilization ponds and to disseminate knowledge of this form of treatment for wastewater in this community and widespread throughout other communities. The intention is to demonstrate the efficacy of the water quality of WSP’s through numerical modelling and to build confidence in safeguarding human health and the environment from wastewater. Further research would need to be done to determine the effectiveness of WSP’s water quality parameters in other different climatic communities in Canada.
Madison BN, Reynolds J, Halliwell L, Leshuk T, Gu F, Peru KM, Headley JV, Orihel DM. (2020) Can the toxicity of naphthenic acids in oil sands process-affected water be mitigated by a green photocatalytic method? FACETS, 5(1):474-487