Ausenco delivered a training session with Nupqu Resource Limited Partnership, owned by the Ktunaxa Nation communities, together with other First Nation partners and Ausenco staff. The session covered environmental risk assessments for contaminated sites and their application in environmental impact assessments, key risk assessment frameworks, and connecting assessments to Indigenous knowledge, community priorities, and local context.
Key insights from the session include:
- Environmental Risk Assessments (ERAs) are used to determine risks to people and ecological receptors, including wildlife, plants, fish, invertebrates, and species at risk. ERAs typically contain two major components, a human health risk assessment (HHRA) and an ecological risk assessment (EcoRA), collectively known as a human health and ecological risk assessment (HHERA).
- ERAs start with problem formulation, identifying where potential risks may be present due to the confluence of contaminants, receptors and pathways.
- Exposure assessments determine the concentration or dose to which each receptor group is exposed.
- Effects/toxicity assessments establish benchmarks to measure whether adverse effects may occur.
- Risk characterisation is the integration of data from the exposure and effects/toxicity assessments, used to determine if unacceptable risks will be present and to guide risk management decisions.
- It is important to conduct an uncertainty analysis as part of ERAs to identify assumptions used in the modelling, estimates of exposure duration and other uncertainties.
Presenters:
Jennifer Trowell, Senior Risk Assessor
Ron Haley, Vice President, Mine Closure and Reclamation