Will the environmental standards change?

The amount of monitoring of aquatic plants and animals communities over the next few years will increase.

This will give us more information on the environmental standards needed by those communities. We will use this information to review and, where necessary, update the environmental standards.

We will need three or more years’ monitoring information for such reviews. This is because it will take at least this amount of time to collect sufficient data to improve on our current scientific understanding of how aquatic animals and plants respond to the condition of the water bodies in which they live.

River basin management planning operates on a six yearly cycle. We think it makes most sense to time the reviews of the standards to coincide with the start of each cycle. This will ensure that there is always sufficient new monitoring data to support the reviews and that the development of each river basin management plan is based on the most up-to-date set of standards. We don’t think it would be appropriate to revise the standards in the middle of a planning cycle. This could disrupt the planning process and reduce the time available for water users to plan and implement the measures necessary to achieve the standards.

The first formal review of the standards is expected in 2012.