Background
Disposal at sea is the authorized disposal of approved substances at designated sites in the sea. In British Columbia, coastal topography and the availability of suitable landfill sites are key constraints in waste management strategies. The annual volume of material dredged and excavated, for which there are no beneficial uses, cannot be accommodated by existing landfill sites and disposal at sea is used as an alternate to land filling. Approved substances are primarily dredged sediment from river or marine sources and native till from land based excavations. Ships, aircraft, platforms and other structures may also occasionally be approved for disposal at sea.
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) regulates disposal at sea activity through a permit system administered under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. As part of this system, ECCC is required to conduct follow-up monitoring at representative disposal at sea sites authorized for use under the regulatory process.
Monitoring activities provide important feedback to the permit application review phase whereby terms and conditions may be modified as necessary to ensure that marine life and human health are protected. Another vital use of monitoring data is to ensure that regulations, guidelines, and permit conditions are adequate to protect the marine environment.
Monitoring of disposal sites in British Columbia includes sediment sampling and analysis for physical, chemical, and biological parameters, sediment profile imaging surveys, current monitoring surveys, and/or hydrographic surveys.
Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC)
The laboratory performing the analysis on solid or sediment must hold ISO 17025 laboratory accreditation from Canadian Association for Laboratory Accreditation (CALA) or Standards Council of Canada (SCC) or American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA). The laboratory performing the analysis on solid or sediment must be accredited for:
- metals by analytical method EPA 6020A or EPA 6020B,
- Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) by Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) or analytical method EPA 8270D or EPA 8270E,
- Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB) by analytical method EPA 1668C, and
- dioxins and furans by analytical method EPA 1613 or EPA 1613B.
The Contractor’s QA/QC program must include but not limited to method blanks, spiked blanks, and laboratory replicate analyses, which are not considered as samples submitted. Cost of QA/QC analysis must be included in the Contractor’s firm sample analysis pricing.
Deliverables
The Contractor must hold at least one meeting within two weeks of being awarded the Contract to discuss the objectives and requirements of the Contract.
The Contractor must provide the analytical data reports/certificates of analyses to ECCC, including pertinent QA/QC data, and results must be approved and certified by authorized personnel of the Contractor prior to release to Technical Authority.
The Contractor must provide the analytical data reports/certificates of analyses in Excel and PDF formats at the same time via email to the Technical Authority within the estimated number of working days from completion of analysis.
