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

2.3.1 UK Legislation
REVIEW
The new Water Framework Directive (Council of Europe, 2000, Environment Agency, 2002)
has been introduced to ensure an integrated approach to the management of catchment surface
and groundwater quality and flow. Consultations are under way in the UK on the
implementation of this directive (DEFRA, 2002). It will be implemented in conjunction with
other legislation such as Part IIa of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 designed to
maintain and improve the quality of surface and groundwater. Under the legislation, the
impact of land causing pollution of controlled waters must be assessed by comparison to the
background water quality and suitable standards such as drinking water and environmental
quality standards (EQS) for surface waters (Smith, 2002). Contaminated land and
contaminated groundwaters arising, where found to cause significant impacts on the surface
water are likely to require remedial action (Rivett et al., 2002).
2.4 Monitoring methods
Comprehensive reviews of the existing analytical, numerical, field and chemical investigative
techniques for groundwater/surface water interactions have been carried out by HRU (2001)
and Winter (1995). On the catchment scale, the most widely-used approach is river
hydrograph separation and baseflow recession analyses to derive the groundwater component
of river flow (Meyboom, 1961, Mau et al., 1997, Gustard et al., 1992). Several workers
(Pinder et al., 1969, O’Conner 1976, Birtles 1978) have used differences in groundwater and
surface water chemistry and total dissolved solids to resolve further the groundwater
component of the river hydrographs. At the smaller scale of the river reach, stream tracers
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