Water and Sediment Quality Services
Water and Sediment Quality Services
Carcinus offers water quality and sediment quality consultancy, survey and reporting services for clients operating in marine, coastal and freshwater environments. Our clients include regulators/competent authorities, local government, ports and harbours, dredging operators, water companies and developers of major infrastructure projects.
We utilise a practical and robust approach to the delivery of our water quality and sediment quality services. Our experienced consultants can project manage all stages of a project, from survey specification and design, through sample collection and analysis to reporting of results. We work closely with regulators and industry partners to ensure any survey design and analysis will meet the clients needs and where possible, provide additional added value by providing data for other purposes such as ecological impact assessment. We utilise a number of laboratories for undertaking analysis, each is UKAS and ISO 17025 accredited for the services we contract.
Carcinus provides the following water and sediment quality services:
- Survey design and management;
- Regulatory engagement and consultation;
- Marine licence application support – including analysis of sediments for dredge disposal applications;
- Designated bathing waters compliance monitoring and investigations;
- Shellfish hygiene compliance studies;
- Dispersion and dilution studies including sediment, effluent and thermal plumes;
- Chemical and microbiological tracer studies;
- Management of laboratory sample analysis services;
- Infrastructure process water monitoring and testing;
- Specification, deployment and servicing of multi-parameter instrumentation for long-term environmental monitoring;
- Environmental risk assessments;
- Discharge consent application support and compliance monitoring; and
- Technical input for Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA).
A Carcinus consultant conducting water quality sampling.
Catchment Based Approach
Carcinus undertake catchment based walkover surveys within hydrological catchments to identify, map and classify a range of point and diffuse pollution sources, including sediment inputs, nutrients, Faecal Indicator Organisms (FIO) and chemical contamination. The identification of these sources is particularly important when trying to address the wide ranging and significant pressures placed on aquatic environments (including coastal waters, rivers, standing water and ground water) by diffuse and point source pollution from rural / agricultural and urban sources.
Using custom Geographical Information System (GIS) Apps designed for efficient, robust and consistent data collection, our aquatic scientists record and classify sources of pollution within a catchment. Field data is then quality assured and processed within a GIS geodatabase enabling us to provide high quality visual outputs, showing the classification, spatial distribution and loadings of sources within a given catchment. The outputs from these surveys are important in a wide range of studies, for example:
- Bacteriological contamination in relation to bathing waters and shellfish hygiene compliance;
- Eutrophication studies;
- Sediment inputs and issues related to fish spawning habitats; and
- Pesticide inputs and the potential to affect potable water supplies.
Sediment plume entering coastal waters – Carcinus provides a wide range of water quality surveys, analysis and assessment services for both marine and freshwater systems.
Chalk stream river – Our aquatic ecologists deliver catchment based assessments that identify diffuse and point source pollution and provide a wide range of mitigation, enhancement and management support services.
More Information
Please download our ‘Water and Sediment Quality’ capability statement or read about our recent projects below.
Water and Sediment Quality
Recent Projects
Shoreline Surveys at Southend-On-Sea and Swansea Bay
Carcinus contracted by the Food Standards Agency
