Monitoring water quality and water levels  

Beneath the surface: the Environment Agency’s Liz Cheslett-Davey on monitoring water quality and levels in Cumbria

Testing our water quality is a key role of the Environment Agency, and in Cumbria, we have many rivers, lakes, and coastal areas to monitor.

To do this, we have a range of specialist equipment at our disposal. This includes sondes, small devices that can be left in rivers and lakes to measure water quality over longer periods of time. Sondes can be programmed to take measurements at regular intervals, so long-term trends in water quality can be observed. They’re fitted with sensors that measure multiple parameters, such as water temperature, pH, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen.

Sondes are useful in capturing changes in water quality due to weather events or pollution events that may be missed by traditional one-off – or spot – sampling.

By using several sondes across a catchment such as those we have in the Windermere means we can observe how certain water quality parameters change seasonally or with environmental conditions.

This helps us understand how water quality of the river or lake responds in different situations.

We also monitor water levels and flows.  Water levels have been monitored for decades. For example, on the River Leven, near Newby Bridge, levels and flow data

have been recorded since 1939.

Newby Bridge is a critical gauging station for us due to its key role in providing data to help us manage water resources in times of low and high flow. The current gauging station was constructed in June 1971 and enables our teams to manage water resources in times of low flow. It also informs our response to high flows and flooding.

The data from the gauging station is sent remotely from the site to our Telemetry system. It is then transferred to our internal Hydrometric archive where it is stored and data shared with other organisations and published online for the public to access.

Alongside collecting this data, we have to ensure we protect the wildlife as well. The weir at Newby Bridge extends for over 120m across the River Leven and incorporates sluice gates and fish passes owned and operated by the Environment Agency.

Fish passes, as the name suggests, are structures designed to help fish navigate past in-river barriers such as dams and weirs.

 

Whilst we often see photos of fish leaping through the air to overcome barriers or waterfalls, the design here is to reduce this ‘leaping’ so fish – like salmon and sea trout – can remain in the water and conserve energy. This also helps juvenile eels, called elvers, travel upstream and over the weir, we operate and maintains 4 eel passes on the Newby Bridge weir too.