Monitoring Projects
Source Water Protection
Monitoring the health of Cape Breton Regional Municipality source watersheds
Have you ever wondered where your water comes from? In the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM), our water comes from lakes and wells throughout the region, also known as source water areas. These surface and groundwater supplies include Kilkenny Lake, Waterford Lake, MacAskill Brook Dam, Kelly Lake, Middle Lake Road Wellfield, and Pottle Lake. Clean drinking water is precious, and our team at ACAP Cape Breton helps ensure our communities have access to clean drinking water by monitoring these source water areas alongside the CBRM. With support from the CBRM, our source water protection projects aim to monitor the health of our source watersheds and other lakes throughout the municipality.
Throughfall, or the rain that falls through a forest’s canopy, is instrumental in “cleaning” rainwater that passes through our source watersheds. Different species of trees have unique effects on the chemistry of rainwater, allowing forests to “scrub” the rainwater of pollutants before it enters our water supply. After significant rainfall events, our team collects rainwater samples from different species of trees at the six primary source watersheds throughout the municipality. We then pass the samples off for analysis to researchers at Cape Breton University who share that data with the CBRM for review.
To learn more about the health of our source watersheds, we conduct two unique monitoring programs:
throughfall monitoring and seasonal lake sampling.
Source: Cape Breton Regional Municipality
Our seasonal lake sampling monitoring program involves visiting 17 lakes throughout the municipality once a season to assess water quality and collect samples.
Interested in getting involved in water quality monitoring in your community?
Check out our volunteer page to join our pool of volunteers and get involved!