Development of a Monitoring Design for Examining Effects in Wild Fish Associated with Discharges from Metal Mines

Abstract

As part of the amended Metal Mining Liquid Effluent Regulations under the Fisheries Act, mines will be required to develop and conduct Environmental Effects Monitoring (EEM). EEM will be done to evaluate the effects of mine effluent on fish, fish habitat, and fish usability. Mines will be required to determine if there are changes in fish populations and/or in the usability of fish due to mine effluent. The EEM program has been designed with a tiered monitoring approach, with the first phase determining if an effect is present. Subsequent phases of EEM will focus on continued monitoring and determining the magnitude, geographic extent, and cause of effects (if any). Fish collected from the area exposed to mine effluent will be compared to fish from a reference area in order to determine if there is an effect, if the effect is mine related and the cause of the effect within the effluent. The fish population survey will examine the growth, reproduction, condition, and survival of one or more resident sentinel fish species. Fish usability will be determined based on the appearance of fish, their use, and the contaminant levels in fish tissue. It is recognized that some mines may not be able to implement a fish monitoring program as outlined, so it has been recommended that alternative methods, such as a caged bivalves or on-site bioassays, may also be used. Frequency of monitoring will be dependent on the previous results of the fish and benthic invertebrate monitoring phases.

Development of an adaptive monitoring framework for long‐term programs: An example using indicators of fish health

“…Using a similar iterative approach, the Canadian EEM program evaluates the impacts of pulp mills (Munkittrick et al ) and metal mines (Ribey et al ). Cycles of surveillance, confirmation, focused (or extent and magnitude), investigation of cause, and investigation of solutions (Environment Canada ) are initiated as differences are encountered.…”

An Adaptive Environmental Effects Monitoring Framework for Assessing the Influences of Liquid Effluents on Benthos, Water, and Sediments in Aquatic Receiving Environments

“…Often the study design associated with focused (extent) monitoring consists of a gradient design (see Figure 2) with samples collected along a gradient of decreasing effluent concentration with increased distance from the effluent discharge (Glozier et al 2002;Ribey et al 2002). If biological endpoints are consistent with the gradient (e.g., Davies and Jackson 2006), these results support the hypothesis that the effluent source is potentially causing the differences observed in the previous tiers.…”

“…The Canadian EEM program was initiated to determine if regulated concentration limits for effluent parameters (under the Fisheries Act) were adequate to protect fish and fish habitats (Ribey et al 2002;Walker et al 2002Walker et al , 2003. As the pulp and paper mills and metal-mining EEM programs matured, flowcharts and decision trees were constructed to describe the major steps (or tiers) and critical decisions in EEM (e.g., Glozier et al 2002;Ribey et al 2002;Kilgour et al 2005Kilgour et al , 2007, including data interpretation issues McMaster et al 2002;Munkittrick et al 2010) and challenges associated with the investigation of cause (Hewitt et al 2005;MacLatchy et al 2010) and the investigation of solutions .…”

Evaluation of Lethal Fish Sampling and the Nonlethal Alternative Under the Canadian Metal and Diamond Mining Environmental Effects Monitoring Program

“…Under the Fisheries Act, the Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulations (MDMER) are designed to protect fish, fish habitat, and fish use by assessing whether metal and diamond mines and mills (hereafter, "mines") are in compliance with effluent discharge regulations (GC 2018). This tiered approach helps to reduce the likelihood of a Type I error by requiring confirmation of results over 2 consecutive phases before moving to focused monitoring (Ribey et al 2002). The EEM program consists of biological, effluent, and receiving water quality monitoring studies.…”

“…During the development of the metal mining EEM program, it was recognized that biological monitoring at metal mines often would be conducted in headwaters with low water flow and small fish populations (Ribey et al 2002). This recognition led to the development of an alternative, nonlethal fish population survey that included alternate effect endpoints for the same response variables utilized for the lethal surveys (Table 1; Gray et al 2002;EC 2005).…”