Evolution of water quality standards

What is it about?

Historical metal ore mining is a major cause of metal pollution to lakes streams and rivers. Water Quality Standards were historically based on a simple single metal concentration limit. As they don't consider any other water chemistry, they tend to be overprotective and this causes problems in identifying priority sites for management and remediation, and targeting limited finances available for remediation.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

This study establishes that by increasing the complexity of water quality assessment tools, to include the availability of metal for organisms uptake, we can set less conservative limits and better target remediation efforts and finance. We can also use predictive tool to better target levels of remediation effort and make better use of available resources.