Incorporation of biological information in water quality planning

Abstract

/ Progress toward the goal of restoring integrity to the waters in the United States has been difficult to assess.This difficulty may arise from the type of regulatory policy that has been traditionally used. With the advent of widespread wastewater treatment, the use of a planning approach employing receiving water impact standards may offer a more practical and direct means of defining and assessing integrity. Biological community response is shown to offer an integrated approach to implementing and evaluating water quality management policy, The state of Maine (USA) has revised its water quality law by utilizing biological community response to assess integrity. This law is presented as a model that employs impact measures and a planning approach for the implementation of water quality management policy.The Federal Water Quality Act (PL 100-4) calls for the restoration and maintenance of the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters. Integrity, however, has proven to be an elusive term as evidenced by a surfeit of inadequate definitions (Ballentine and Guarraia, 1977). Long-established water quality assessment practices have never directly addressed the measurement of ecological integrity (Karr and Dudley, 1981) and, in fact, inherently hinder the application of this more holistic view. Historically, water quality policy has relied upon performance-based standards to establish allowable pollutant loads, monitoring requirements, and enforcement actions. These standards were designed to alleviate distinct pollution problems, especially to reduce waterborne pathogens, maintain dissolved oxygen, and control toxic substances.If maintenance of ecological integrity is considered the ultimate goal of water quality management, a new approach to management may be required. The traditional use of performance standards is inadequate because they are not designed to address broad goals such as ecological integrity. The state of Maine has approached this problem by revising its water quality law to incorporate biological community response as a standard that addresses ecological impact rather than discharger performance. By establishing statutory definitions of different levels of integrity, the condition of the biological community is used as a standard for water quality classification. With clearly defined goals

Biological Integrity: A Long‐Neglected Aspect of Water Resource Management

“…Some have adopted legal biological criteria (Florida, Vermont), biological-based use designations (e.g., excellent warmwater habitat: Maine, Courtemanch et al 1989; Arkansas, Rohm et al 1987), and biological criteria in assessments and monitoring (Michael et al 1989). Following a detailed, statewide program to evaluate ambient (field) biological monitoring, Ohio is incorporating biological monitoring into regulations for attainment of the goals of the Clean Water Act.…”

A new scheme for biomonitoring heavy metal concentrations in semi-natural wetlands

“…Plants and macroinvertebrates are the most commonly used assemblages in wetland bioassessments [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]11]. Vegetation is a convenient assemblage because Table 1 The set of alternatives of biological assemblages for short-term monitoring chromium(VI) in the survey area Short-term monitoring alternatives it occurs in most wetland types and there are well-established sampling protocols [6][7][8][9][10]; however, identifying metrics can be challenging [7].…”

“…The preliminary search in the KB for indigenous species sensitive to chromium(VI) (stage 5) showed that the capacity of the area for biomonitoring purposes is adequate (Fig. 6a), although there are only few species specific to chromium(VI), necessitating the program design to heavily rely upon the biochemical analysis of the species for the determination of the level of chromium accumulation [22,24]; however, field assessments of visible malformations have not been presently ignored, as these are critical in determining the bioremediation efficiency and bioaccumulation levels [1][2][3][4]9,11], especially for the heavily toxic chromium(VI).…”

“…Longer-lived organisms that are slower to recover (macrophytes, some invertebrates, and many fish) may indicate the impact of pulsed stressors that occur only periodically. Many studies have utilized specific taxa for monitoring aquatic health, deriving relevant metrics and indices [2][3][4]9,10,14]; however, if the objectives are to determine the impact of an exotic invasion, interacting species (prey and competitors) will be the best indicators. Clearly, it is necessary to include several groups in the biological assemblage in order to indicate overall environmental health and integrity given the potential for multiple, difficult to measure, non-point-source pollutants.…”

“…Several approaches have been implemented to exploit biological stress response for evaluating environmental conditions in complex ecosystems as aquatic [3,4], semi-aquatic and semi-terrestrial habitats [5][6][7][8], aiming at analyzing species environmental relationships for the development of models that could be used to predict impacts on biodiversity under altered hydrogeochemical regimes. However, only a few of them have been systematically expanded into standardized and tested approaches [6,[8][9][10], leading to valuable ecologically relevant classification schemes, biological metrics and indicators.…”