Lead researcher and Principal Investigator Professor Brent Sleep (CivE) has been awarded $3,213,700 by the Ontario Research Fund – Research Excellence (ORF-RE) Water Round program.

He and his team, made up of seven co-investigators from Queen’s University, University of Waterloo and U of T, will investigate combined treatment technologies for remediating contaminated groundwater in Ontario.

“This grant is important because it will help us train and educate students, and help redevelop industrial lands that have languished untreated in the province,” said Professor Brent Sleep.

Within Canada, there are an estimated 30,000 contaminated water and soil sites known as ‘brownfields’ that contain hazardous chemicals such as chlorinated solvents and hydrocarbons such as coal tars. To make these often vacant and underused sites ready for redevelopment, governments and companies spend considerable amounts of money to clean them up. In some cases these sites remain polluted for decades, making the cleaning process that much more difficult and costly.

Professor Sleep’s work has the potential to create more cost-effective water treatment technologies using an innovative combination of promising methods based on physical biological and chemical processes.

The project will also develop monitoring techniques to assess the impact of water treatment technologies on pollutant removal.

“Early industrial operations in Canada and around the world did not have the same sense of environmental stewardship that we have today,” said Professor Brenda McCabe, Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering. “We are extremely proud of Professor Brent Sleep whose research will help Ontario and Canada stay at the forefront by developing new and effective ways to remediate brownfield sites for a healthy and successful economy.”

For more information about the project, please visit the Ministry of Research & Innovation