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Hutchinson Environmental Sciences

Aquatic & Environmental Management Consultants

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Phosphorus Budget Tool for the Nottawasaga Valley
Conservation Authority

Developing a tool that provides a repeatable process to estimate phosphorus loadings in the nutrient-sensitive watershed.

The Challenge

The Government of Ontario allocated substantial population growth to the nutrient-sensitive Nottawasaga River watershed. With that allocation, Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority (NVCA) needed to understand how to manage the new development in a way that either stabilized or reduced current loadings of phosphorus to protect water quality.

NVCA retained us to develop a standard and reproducible approach to estimate phosphorus loadings as a function of land use and to model the benefits of best management practice and low impact development to achieve targets of “no net increase” for new development.

The Solution

We refined a previous export coefficient model for the Lake Simcoe watershed that we developed for the Ontario government to: 

  • Reflect site-specific soil and runoff characteristics for the specific land use classes that are most often changed with urbanization, such as cropland, high intensity residential, industrial, commercial and transportation.
  • Model export from unaltered land uses.
  • Incorporate a variety of best management practices and low impact development practices to reduce phosphorus export from new development.
  • Link all estimates into a site-specific phosphorous budget comparing loadings before and after development.
The Outcome

The tool was provided to NVCA in a Microsoft Access © application, a user manual and a workshop demonstrating its use. The NVCA later modified it for direct use on its website. 

Project Lead(s):

  • Neil Hutchinson

Client: Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority

Location: Nottawasaga Valley, Ontario

Sector: NGO

Date of Project: December 2014 – October 2015


Services Provided:

Peer Review Technical Facilitation
Watershed Management
Wastewater
Urban Runoff

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