Setting water quality criteria: Be a tortoise

In general, water quality guidelines provide only narrative criteria for biostimulants, leaving regulators and managers in the position of having to set their own requirements, often based on a paucity of local data. Fortunately, numerical values for such materials and their effects can be sensibly established, and are generally quite widely applicable. Environmental values and associated criteria have been set for the Marmion Marine Park, an oligotrophic coastal area north of Perth, Western Australia, that receives treated wastewater from an ocean outlet. The criteria that have been established include traditional physical and chemical parameters, as well as a suite of biological parameters. Reference to these by regular measurement as well as simple ecosystem modelling and process studies, will form the basis of a regional water quality monitoring programme to be implemented by the Water Authority of Western Australia. The criteria themselves, as well as the process used in their development, have wide geographic applicability