Water Quality/Quantity Monitoring

Introduction

Forest Investment Account funding recipients interested in undertaking Water Quality/Quantity Monitoring projects are required under their recipient agreement with PricewaterhouseCoopers to adhere to RISC standards or Best Practices standards established by government. The table below provides on-line access to those standards.

Recipients of FIA funding are requested to notify the Science and Information Branch of the Ministry of Environment of any water quality or water quantity (including snow) projects that when initiated.

Recipients of FIA funding undertaking water quality monitoring and submitting discrete (grab) samples to a laboratory must use a C.A.E.A.L. (Canadian Association for Environmental Analytical Laboratories) accredited laboratory which must upload the discrete sample data along with blank sample data to the provincial EMS (Environmental Management System) database.

Final project deliverables including reports and all data must also be submitted in digital format to the Science and Information Branch of the Ministry of Environment . The field data, whether as discrete measurements or as time series, should be submitted in both the original raw data form and as corrected, graded, or validated data, if available. All meta data (including quality assurance information, geo-referenced site location information, and site images) are required with the field data submission.

For help and advice on transferring or uploading the data files, please contact:

• for discrete, grab sample water quality data – EMSHELP@gov.bc.ca
• for time series water quality and all water quantity data - WIDM Application Manager at WIDM Application Manager 
  

For FIA funded hydrometric projects with operations delivered by Water Survey of Canada (under the Federal / Provincial Hydrometric Agreement): 1) operations are approved to use WSC national standards which meet/exceed RISC methods standards in all respects; 2) the required deliverables are station operation to national standards and discharge data that may be computed later according to the annual operation/data production cycle; and 3) WSC data are stored in the national WSC archive, in lieu of WIDM.

In the event a recipient desires to vary from the standards a request must be submitted to PricewaterhouseCoopers who will then forward that request for approval of the variance.

Mandatory Standards

	•	Manual of B.C. Hydrometric Standards V1.0, March 12, 2009
	•	Continuous Water-Quality Sampling Programs: Operating Procedures 2006 (2.65MB PDF)
	•	Continuous Water-Quality Sampling Programs: Operating Procedures 2006 - Appendices (205KB PDF)
	•	Principles for Preparing Water Quality Objectives in BC
	•	British Columbia Field Sampling Manual: 2003 — Part E, Ambient Freshwater and Effluent Sampling
	•	The Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network: Field Manual; March 11, 2009 (PDF 1.4MB)

Project Specific Standards

	•	Guidelines for Designing and Implementing a Water Quality Monitoring Program in British Columbia Version 1.0
	•	Guidelines for Interpreting Water Quality Data Version 1.0
	•	Freshwater Biological Sampling Manual
	•	Lake and Stream Bottom Sediment Sampling Manual

Other Related Information– Non Standards

	•	Policy Statements Regarding Water Quality Guidelines and Objectives
	•	Water Quality Guidelines-Approved
	•	Developing Water Quality Objectives in BC-A User's Guide
	•	Methods for Deriving Site-Specific Water Quality Objectives in BC and Yukon
	•	Sampling Strategy for Turbidity, Suspended and Benthic Sediments
	•	Snow Survey Sampling guide (PDF 11.5MB)
	•	Guidelines for Monitoring Fine Sediment Deposition in Streams (PDF 8.28MB)
	•	Forest and Range Evaluation Program (FREP)
	•	Equipment Disinfection Procedures to Prevent the Accidental Spread of Aquatic Invasive Species (PDF 6.33MB)

Last Modified: April 5, 2012