It was a great pleasure to host the 12th in our series of Water Conservators webinars titled “How Do We Ensure Water Quality After Brexit?” presented by Professor Sean Comber of Plymouth University. Professor Comber began his talk by outlining his background, spending many years at WRC working on environmental monitoring, then with WS Atkins on projects driven by the European Framework Directive, and then finally with University of Plymouth.
He then went on to explain how the toxicity of metals in rivers are impacted by their form and ambient conditions and how European Quality Standards for phosphates assume all phosphorus is soluble and bioavailable, whereas the bioavailable phosphorus is dependent many factors such as suspended solids. He also described the impact the river environment can have on the bioavailability of organics and pharmaceuticals, and the current regulatory set up around 50 priority and priority hazardous substances some with standards set just above the level of detection.
Professor Comber then outlined how quality standards are set with factors of safety being introduced at each level of the food chain to ensure a tolerable level of dietary intake in humans. The cost of compliance is enormous with £4bn of water industry investment planned for 2020-25 mostly for phosphorus removal at Sewage Treatment Works. Finally, he suggested a possible way forward for the future compliance of metals, phosphate and organics that includes a bioavailability assessment, along with more toxicity testing and the better management of pharmaceuticals at source as an effective way of reducing risk at a reasonable cost.
Professor Comber’s presentation was then followed by an excellent question and answer session where some of the key challenges for the UK water sector post Brexit were discussed. On behalf of everyone I would again like to thank Professor Comber for an excellent presentation, and also give my thanks to everyone who attended making the webinar a great success.
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