What are the types of monitoring required under the WFD?

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

• Surveillance – to help validate risk assessments and detect long-term trends;

• Operational – to help establish the status of water bodies and whether they meet their environmental objectives; to monitor changes in their status.

• Investigative – to ascertain the cause of any failure, or risk of failure; to meet objectives; to investigate the magnitude and impact of accidental pollution.

For each surface water body, the Competent Authorities will co-ordinate the assessment of areas as appropriate, including:

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

• Hydromorphology

• Physico-chemistry (including pollutants)

• Priority and priority-hazardous substances

For groundwaters, the monitoring requirements cover:

• Groundwater resources through a water level monitoring network;

• Surveillance and operational monitoring of chemical status (Common Implementation Strategy, 2003a)

The UK, like all other Member States, must establish its first monitoring networks by 22 December 2006, and must report these monitoring plans to Europe by March 2007.

For further information about monitoring, please see the UKTAG webpages on monitoring.