Parliamentary Debate 21/06/2227 Jun 2022 13:20
We know about the flow duration monitors but this mentions real-time testing for quality.
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/10456/pdf/
Many of our recommendations were
around increased use of technology to allow monitoring to take place
remotely and in real time. The Government recognised that, and one of
the key provisions and amendments that went into the Environment Bill
when it was going through your House was that water assets should have
monitoring devices upstream and downstream of every outfall from a
treatment facility or a sewage storm overflow. That is in the order of
22,000 locations across England. That is going into the next capital plans
that will be approved by Ofwat for the water companies, and will allow for
monitoring to be made available to the companies themselves in—as I
think the legislation says—near real time.
The water companies will be able to identify where there is a problem, as
opposed to the situation at the moment where, in many cases, the event
duration monitor will tell when there is a spillage but not what impact it is
having on the receiving water. A small spillage into a fast and large river
will have negligible impact, but a small spillage of the same volume into a
small stream could have a very significant impact. Testing what happens
in the water and making that available to the company, then to the
Environment Agency and then to the public will transform our
understanding about what is going wrong, which will allow the
Environment Agency in particular to change the way it polices incidents.
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