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Environmental Monitoring
The primary water quality parameters examined were the faecal indicator compliance
parameters of total coliform organisms, faecal coliform organisms and intestinal
enterococci. In addition, the following physico-chemical parameters were measured:
nitrate, nitrite, ammoniacal nitrogen and orthophosphate.
The pre-remediation monitoring team of SAC, CREH and the Macaulay Institute
was deployed in October 2003. The timing of this deployment was to acquire water
quality data as close as possible to the ‘summer’ catchment condition. However,
the period of pre-remediation monitoring was out with the bathing season of June
to September. Complementary investigations suggested that there may be a strong
seasonality in the high flow concentration of faecal indicators in streams draining
areas of livestock farming, with the highest concentrations evident in the summer
period when stock were present in the catchment fields.
Figure 1: Subcatchment and monitoring stations
Given the timing of the pre-remediation sampling two options were possible. First,
the monitoring could be undertaken in the same season (i.e. October to November
2004) which should minimise the effects of seasonality in the temporal comparison
in water quality pre- and post-remediation. This option was, perhaps, the most
‘conservative’ but it would result in no data having been acquired during the bathing
season itself during either pre- or post-remediation phases with the inherent risk that
it would fail to pick up the impacts of farming and other activities on the catchment
which only occurred in the period of the bathing season. Second, the monitoring
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