HOW KNOWING THE ECOLOGY OF YOUR SITE CAN POTENTIALLY SAVE YOU FROM ENVIRONMENTAL FINES Kirsty Spencer and Mark Tomlinson, Principal Ecologists at Adler& Allan explain how finding out about the health of plants, fish and invertebrates on your land and water can keep your business safe. If you know the ecology of your site, you can spot and repair any potential problems that might be building up undetected. Not acting quickly, though, could result in serious contamination that could lead to massive clean-up costs, operational downtime, environmental fines and reputational damage. The variety of liquids and gases a storage terminal, tank container, road tanker, shipping, port or rail operation might handle is vast. Among them are refined petrochemicals, chemical compounds, foodstuffs and energy-based fuels. The commodities are also received and stored in widely differing volumes before their onward journey.
Ecologist conducting a river survey
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One thing nearly all of them have in common, though, is that they can wreak catastrophic environmental damage if allowed to escape from storage, containment and distribution assets. And the issues leading to such pollution can sometimes go unnoticed for many years by operators - there may only be a drip flow of small amounts at a time - particularly when an effective asset management strategy has not been put in place. It means that problems could be building up for a long time before anyone realises what’s going on.
Warning signs This makes it imperative to look to your site’s ecology for the warning signs that can tell you so much about its environmental health and to establish the ‘baseline’ conditions that can then be referenced should a spill take place. For example, the diversity of aquatic invertebrates, or lack of them, can indicate
the health of a waterbody. A thorough analysis is so much more accurate than ‘taking the pulse’ with a water quality meter, which is merely a snapshot of wellbeing. The in-depth study can report widely varying results over very short periods - for instance, charting rapid rates of decline and recovery in a matter of just days. This complete check will look at population levels of animals (fauna) and aquatic plants (flora) that are known to be sensitive to pollution. Particular bellwethers are fish and macroinvertebrates – creatures without a spine that can be seen with the naked eye - for instance, snails, and insect larvae, such as dragonfly nymphs. However, detailed knowledge about the different tolerances of various species is also essential. For example, stickleback can thrive in quite dirty, poorly oxygenated water, giving the misleading impression that all is well, whereas the loss or absence of brown trout in a river or stream they were once found in can indicate it is detrimentally impacted.
Examining fish for their condition and health can indicate the condition of the local environment.
