Spatial and seasonal toxicity in a stormwater management facility: evidence obtained by adapting an integrated sediment quality assessment approach.

Stormwater ponds have been widely used to control increased surface runoff resulting from urbanization, and to enhance runoff quality. As receiving waters, they are impacted by intermittent stormwater pollution while also serving as newly created aquatic habitats, which partly offset changes of aquatic ecosystems and their biodiversity by urbanization. Thus, determining ecological risks in stormwater ponds is important for the preservation and rehabilitation of biodiversity in urban areas. Limitations of the conventional toxicity assessment techniques in stormwater ponds have led us to use the sediment quality triad approach with the specific analyses of oligochaetes. The latter analyses build on the earlier work by the Cemagref (Lyon, France) and use the oligochaetes as bioindicators of the sediment quality. This integrative approach was tested at eight sites in the Terraview-Willowfield stormwater facility in Toronto, Ontario, in all four seasons (summer 2008-spring 2009). The facility receives direct runoff from the MacDonald-Cartier freeway with a traffic intensity of 340,000 vehicles/d. Sediment chemistry results indicate that several heavy metals and PAH compounds exceeded the Ontario sediment quality guidelines in the facility. Regardless of the season, laboratory bioassays revealed a strong spatial variation in sediment toxicity along the flow path from the inlet to the outlet, agreeing with decreasing concentrations of contaminants in sediment, especially of heavy metals. However, in situ assessments of the benthic macroinvertebrate community structure and in particular of the oligochaete community revealed an overriding influence of seasonally varying toxicity. This seasonal pattern was described as high toxicity in spring and recovery in fall and corresponded to the influx and flushing-out of road salts and of several heavy metals within the facility. Crown