Water Quality Monitoring Plan Details

For projects required to monitor the quality and/or levels of surfacewater or groundwater, a water quality monitoring plan/protocol document must be provided as a separate manual, for ease-of-reference by the applicant, consultants, and the Department. This manual must be prepared, signed, and dated by a pro-fessional qualified in water chemistry interpretation (and when groundwater flow interpretations and moni-toring well selection are conducted to prepare the plan, endorsed by a Certified Geologist), and must in-clude the following, at a minimum:

1. Identification/summary of all monitoring points (e.g. monitoring wells, lysimeters, springs, etc.) to be used for measurement of water levels or for water quality analysis. Monitoring points must have an assigned identification symbol (alpha/numeric), and, where appropriate, elevation referenced to an es-tablished, permanent benchmark. Include a map showing all monitoring points.

2. Outline of the monitoring frequency at each monitoring point, by the number of sampling/analysis events per year (e.g. quarterly, etc.) and by month (e.g. April, September, etc.).

3. Provision for obtaining adequate data on background water quality and/or levels, and for using a statis-tically-valid method for determining a significant increase in parameter concentrations (e.g. contamin-ation levels, but not necessarily MCL's/MEG's). At a minimum, determination of background water quality or levels must consist of quarterly sampling/analysis for 1 year.

4. List of parameters to be analyzed, including references to the laboratory analysis methods to be utilized for each parameter, detection limits for each analysis method, and the MCL's/MEG's for all applicable parameters. All monitoring must include field parameters (conductivity, temperature, pH, and TDS), in addition to parameters specific to the monitoring program objectives.

5. Identification of the qualified personnel to take water level measurements and water quality analysis samples. These tasks should not be done by the applicant or employee of the applicant, but if proposed, then item 6 below must be addressed.

6. Written certification from a qualified expert that personnel to conduct monitoring are or will be ade-quately trained to properly collect measurements and/or samples by approved methods and protocols.

7. Description of the equipment and methods to be employed for water level measurement and/or water quality analysis sample-taking.

8. Description of the quality assurance/quality control and chain-of-custody protocols to be followed for water quality sampling, preservation, storage, transport, and laboratory analysis.

9. Provision for a professional qualified in water chemistry or groundwater flow interpretation to summar-ize, evaluate, and provide recommendations on the monitoring results that is submitted annually to the Department, unless a problem is evident, in which case the Department is to be notified immediately. Annual reports must include historical, as well as the most recent year's monitoring data for each moni-toring point, which is presented in a tabular format. Reports must be signed/dated by the professional responsible for their preparation.

10. A provision that, if water levels or water quality monitoring results indicate adverse effects are occur-ring as a result of the project activity, then an evaluation will be made by a qualified professional and an appropriate remedial action/mitigation plan will be developed and submitted to the Department for re-view and approval.

rev. 6/99 DEPLW-130-A1999