British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium

Water quality monitoring : developing data quality objectives for Gibraltar Mine Mueller, Patrick; Hugdahl, Mark; Wambolt, Todd

Abstract

Site or project specific data quality objectives (DQOs) describe the amount of error that is acceptable for a water quality monitoring program. Held quality control samples are used to include sample collection in the measurement of data quality. The results of analysis of the field quality control samples are compared to DQOs to evaluate if overall data quality is acceptable. Gibraltar Mine has a water quality monitoring program for surface water, ground water and process water. The program includes the analysis of total metals, dissolved metals, anions and nutrients. Field quality control samples include field blanks, filtration blanks, and field duplicates. In this study DQOs are developed for field blanks and field duplicates. DQOs are also developed for the comparison of total and dissolved metals, which is not normally considered a component of quality control. The proposed DQOs are applied to water quality monitoring data from Gibraltar Mine. This paper discusses the development and application of DQOs for water quality monitoring at Gibraltar Mine, and presents new DQO approaches for field duplicates and comparison of total and dissolved metals.

Item Citations and Data

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International