UK Monitoring

The main reasons for undertaking monitoring for the WFD are to:

 Establish an overview of the water status of each river basin district

 Classify individual water bodies as to their water status (classification)

A monitoring network will be produced on a country basis for the following:

 Surface waters (rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters);

 Groundwaters;

 Protected Areas; and

 Wetlands.

For surface waters 3 types of monitoring are required by the WFD:

 Surveillance – to validate the characterisation pressure and impact assessments, detect long-term trends;

 Operational – to help classify those water bodies which are at risk of failing to meet ‘good status’; and

 Investigative – to ascertain the cause and effects of a failure to meet ‘good status’ where it is not clear.

For each surface waterbody, the Competent Authorities will assess as appropriate:

 Biology (plankton/phytobenthos, macrophytes, invertebrates and fish)

 Hydromorphology

 Physico-chemical (including pollutants)

 Priority and priority-hazardous substances

For groundwaters, the monitoring requirements cover:

o Groundwater resources through a water level monitoring network;

o Surveillance and operational monitoring of chemical status (CIS, 2003a)

The UK, like all other Member States must complete its planning by 22 December 2006, and must report to Europe our monitoring plans for operational and surveillance monitoring by March 2007.

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