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instrumentation technical specialist, says: “To build up even a fraction of the same picture you would need to take numerous ‘spot’ samples at frequent intervals and then send each of these for laboratory-based testing”.


It has long been understood that ‘spot’ or ‘grab’ samples can only provide results that tell you what is happening in the water column at the exact moment the sample bottle is filled.


‘High resolution testing’, or in other words testing that can detect episodic events in a water course - including both natural or man-made occurrences – has been a regulatory requirement since the EC Water Framework Directive (WFD) was introduced in 2000.


There are daughter directives that stem from the WFD, including surface waters and bathing waters, and effluent discharges into water courses that must be sampled and monitored to prevent the release of contamination. Many of these now come under the Operator Self Monitoring (OSM) regulations implemented in April 2009, placing the responsibility onto the producer rather than samples being taken by the regulator for analysis, which in the case of England and Wales is the Environment Agency.


Under OSM, organisations have to prove to the regulator that their monitoring arrangements are adequate for the activities that they are engaged in. At present, it is widely accepted that the taking of a single sample each month, each week, once a day or even every hour, will not generate enough data to provide a comprehensive categorisation of what is actually happening over time in a given water course. Water companies themselves are now looking to real time monitoring solutions that typically take readings every few minutes, to better understand the range of pressures on a body of water.


The ultimate aim is to identify the sources of pollution and then look to restrict or limit those with greatest


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influence. This includes monitoring the impact of what are increasingly frequent, storm events. These can cause turbidity issues, triggering a water company to take action to minimise the disruption and cost involved in treating contaminated river water.


The latest proposals from the water industry advocate the introduction of ‘flexible consenting’, which requires the real time monitoring of river conditions, and specifically water flow. The concept of ‘flexible consenting’ is to allow for variable discharge standards dependent upon high or low river flow.


Adoption concerns For many, field-based monitoring represents a logical progression from laboratory-based testing, for some, there are deployment concerns. Many of which are


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