With respect to your second option, it is not applicable in BC.  That is cut and dried.  You cannot average pH or hardness for a site and use that to apply a blanket standard.  The standards apply on a per sample basis.  Full stop.  If you have one sample that fails it's pH or harndess dependant standard, you are done.  The regulators do not accept averaging of the dependant factors as an approach.

For BC, option 1 is the only choice.

Thank you for considering these options.

I'm afraid that for BC, there is no way around the sample specific standard approach.  We simply do not blanket a site with an overall standard when they are sample specific.  Yes, that does mean that you could have 50 samples on one site an only one of them fails, but that also means that you only have one sample on your site that has to be remediated, not the whole site.

The words BC Regulations and easy or transparent simply do not go together.  We live with this every day.

Hi Ryan,

The current compilations use the most conservative value (irrespective of pH etc..) as the default value, and have a comment indicating that higher trigger values may be applicable depending on the pH etc..  If you select the "Comments" checkbox in Environmental standards prior to producing the table then you should see this comment in the output table.  Is that suitable as a "Flag" for your needs?

In any case I'd recommend changing the value in the zRef_Environmental_Standards table in the database, rather than in the output tables,  then regenerating them, otherwise you have to remember to change the output every time you produce the table.

Regards,

Warwick

Hey Warwick,

 Yes, I think the way to go would be to check pH/Hardness of all samples for the sampling round, and then pull out the lowest applicable standard based on sampling round results, with a note in the comments.   Ideally, it would be great to show a range (ie:  for Zinc:  150 - 350, with a note in the comments).   Or, not sure if this is doable, but have multiple rows made for each compound with a pH / hardess dependant standard, with each row having a different value along with the corresponding pH / hardness value (ie:  1st row:  150 @ pH <6.5, 2nd row: 300 @pH<7.0 etc...) or split up the standard and the corresponding pH into different columns, calling one Environmental Standards, and the other "Trigger pH value" or something like that....

 Just a couple thoughts.

Thanks.

Hello,

An update to BC Sch 5 (which has pH dependant values) has been uploaded to the web site.  Future compilations will be using, and building on, the same approach.

It allows users to specify the expected pH range across the site, and guideline values are chosen based on the range.  The logic is all contained in Excel formulaes, so is easy to customise if need be.  Comments are also generated for each guideline indicating the pH range used for selecting a particular value.

Comments on this approach are very welcome, but we have decided that having varying guideline values for different pH values on a sample by sample basis is difficult to display visually (and transparently) on a single Chemistry Table, as well as being difficult to audit.  Therefore exceedances of the "Conservative" values for a pH/hardness range will be flagged.  These can be un-flagged manually where that is appropiate.

If you are using a regulatory guideline that is either not compiled (by us) for use through ESdat, or you would like updated to the new approach please send the guideline through.

Sincerly,

Alex