Chairholders
Profile
Peter M. Huck
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Waterloo
Chair title
NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Water Treatment
Chair program
Industrial Research Chairs program
Role
Senior Chairholder since 1993
Summary
The NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Water at the University of Waterloo functions as a centre of expertise. Its mission is to conduct leading-edge, fundamentally based, yet practically oriented research on critical issues in water treatment and quality, and to facilitate interactions between Canadian industry and universities. Our research addresses the short- to medium-term needs of our funding partners, which include municipalities, consultants and industry involved in the treatment and provision of water. Research will be conducted over the five-year period (2018–2022) of the Chair term to address such challenges as drastically changing source water quality, more stringent regulations and the desire for more sustainable processes, while ensuring robust protection of public health. The three major research themes are:
- Successfully managing raw water quality changes through robust systems, which will develop tools to help utilities plan for extreme weather events, spill scenarios, seasonal cyanotoxins blooms, and emerging contaminants such as microplastics.
- Green and innovative treatment processes, which will study biofiltration for cyanotoxin removal, sustainable approaches to control groundwater hardness and manganese using newer technologies, and novel, reusable, composite adsorbents for contaminants such as cyanotoxins.
- Understanding corrosion, with a focus on lead, which will investigate corrosion control measures to minimize lead release from existing lead pipes and lead-bearing plumbing system components, and also potential interactions between the control and distribution system residual maintenance practices.
Partners
- Associated Engineering Group Ltd.
- City of Barrie
- City of Brantford
- City of Guelph
- Hamilton Water
- City of Ottawa
- Durham Region
- EPCOR Water Services Inc.
- GHD
- Lake Huron and Elgin Area Primary Water Supply System, Ontario
- National Silicates
- Niagara Region
- Ontario Clean Water Agency
- Oxford County
- Regional Municipality of Muskoka
- Region of Waterloo
- Toronto Water
Contact information
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Waterloo
Email: pm2huck@uwaterloo.ca
