COAG Standing Council on Environment and Water; National Water Reform Thematic Oversight Group Joint Steering Committee The Revision of the Australian and New Zealand Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality (2000) November 2013 Update Project 2: Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting The Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of the Australian and New Zealand Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality (2000) have been meeting monthly and progress has been made on many aspects of the review. Project Updates Significant progress has been made toward the scoping and letting of Project contracts. The project to update BurrliOz Trigger Value derivation software is in the testing phase. The contract for Project 2: Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting has been let and work is likely to be completed by July 2014. The details for Project 2 are below. Project 2: Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Monitoring, Assessment, and Reporting cut across all indicators for aquatic ecosystems and in the process of the Revision, accurate cross-referencing of this advice is required. This process includes integrating and reconciling the monitoring and assessment guidance within Document 4: Australian and New Zealand Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality (2000) with related guidance contained in Document 7: Australian Guidelines for Monitoring and Reporting (2000). Scope for Project 2 Consultancy 1. In consultation with jurisdictional experts: a. Review the suitability of existing Guidelines (Documents 4 and 7) monitoring information. b. Identify duplications in monitoring, assessment and reporting advice between Documents 4 and 7, and make recommendations to eliminate/reconcile similar or differing advice. c. Recommend and prioritise for the Revision’s purposes new, but established, approaches and techniques since 2000 to water quality/aquatic ecosystem health assessments of physical, chemical, biological indicators (e.g. data collection, multivariate analyses, and Bayesian techniques). 2. Draft guidance materials for new, but established, approaches and techniques from 1 in priority order. 3. Align existing and relevant monitoring, assessment and reporting guidance (from Documents 4 and 7), in addition to new guidance from 2, to the proposed new Guidelines’ web-based platform in a comprehensive, ‘cradle-to-grave’ framework. Output The output for Project 2 integrates new (but established) assessment approaches and techniques into new guidance documents that also reconcile the current (2000) monitoring and assessment guidance in Document 4 and Document 7. These new guidance documents will be integrated into the new web based platform. Please direct enquiries to: Joint Steering Committee Secretariat Address: GPO Box 787, Canberra, ACT, 2601. Phone: (02) 6274 2580 Email: JSC_Secretariat@environment.gov.au 2