The impact of urban groundwater upon surface water - eTheses ...

CONCLUSIONS
Objective 4. To develop suitable monitoring methods to quantify contaminant flux to the
river.
The use of riverbed piezometers was found particularly useful in this study, both for assessing
the quality of the groundwater that is discharging to the river, and for investigating specific
contaminant plumes. The riverbed coring device successfully provided samples of bed
sediment to a maximum depth of 50 cm. The temperature probe proved to be a useful tool in
characterising the riverbed and indicating areas of groundwater inflow. The pressure
transducers that were constructed were economical and proved useful in measuring variations
in water level in the narrow (20 mm I.D.) riverbank piezometers. The seepage meters,
however, proved of limited use, mainly because of fast river flows and the ‘armoured’ nature
of the riverbed. They need to be adapted to the conditions if they are to be used in the future.
The techniques of riverbed investigation applied in this study may be more difficult to use on
larger rivers, but because groundwater flows tend to be concentrated at the shoreline/channel
sides they could still prove useful.
9.3 Policy Implications and the Water Framework Directive
The EU 2000 Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires integrated management of surface
waters and groundwaters within a river basin, knowledge of the groundwater and surface
water interactions, and the exchange of flows and contaminants that may occur. Data on the
likely contribution of urban groundwater to the surface-water system are therefore vital to the
understanding of each river basin and the necessary tools and data collection procedures must
be developed to provide this knowledge. Research on the River Tame in Birmingham has
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