Assessing risks to controlled waters
Assessing the risks of soil and groundwater contamination to controlled waters requires a different knowledge set and uses different models to those used for human-health risk assessments.
Like human-health risk assessments, a tiered approach is adopted; ranging from a simple comparison of leachate or groundwater concentrations to appropriate water quality standards to simple and more complex fate and transport models which require informed selection of input parameters such as contaminant properties and aquifer characteristics.
The Environment Agency’s recent confirmation that it will limit controlled waters risk assessment support to local authorities in all but the highest risk cases places greater responsibility on council officers to review controlled waters risk assessments in detail; a role that many local authorities may not be prepared for. In response, LQM will be host the ever-popular “Introduction to hydrogeological risk assessment for Contaminated Land” course again on the 7th March 2016.
The course includes hands on experience of the Environment Agency’s commonly used P20 spreadsheets whilst also making reference to differences between P20 and the probabilistic ConSim and is ideal for those wishing to understand the basics of hydrogeology and gain further experience of the tiered framework for assessing risks of pollution of controlled waters from land contamination.
