Case Study
Discharge Monitoring
Location
River Deer, Devon, UK
Date
July 2018
Client
Andigestion
Tasks
The following actions were undertaken by our aquatic ecologists to assess the biological quality of the River Deer and the impact of the consented discharge:
- Survey design
- Desk study of current WFD classification
- Site selection, including representative control site
- Consent application and regulator liaison
- Fish population assessment, using electric fishing
- Macroinvertebrate kick sample collection
- Macroinvertebrate sample analysis to species level (TL5)
- Report of our findings
Key remarks
Our professional team used their expertise in aquatic ecology to provide Water Framework Directive (WFD) compliant survey design to meet the monitoring requirements of the environmental permit. In total three sites were surveyed to provide comprehensive and robust information on the impact of discharge from their facility, these included:
- Control site – upstream of discharge
- Immediately downstream of discharge
- 5oom downstream of discharge
The team navigated challenging access to ensure sites were representative for collection of high quality data to assess the follwing at all three sites:
- Habitat assessment
- 3-minute kick sample
- Fish population assessment using electric fishing
Effects
- WFD compliant survey methodology provides robust data set for our client to meet the requirements set out by the regulator
- Our expertise in site selection provided comprehensive investigation of discharge impacts
- Baseline data to recognised industry standards which are repeatable for future monitoring and assessment
