9.9 Incident and emergency response monitoring

General aspects of incident and emergency response are discussed in Section 3.6. Any emergency or incident is likely to trigger an increase in monitoring frequency. The increase in testing frequency for grab samples should reflect the risk that the incident poses to consumers and the characteristics being monitored. The increase in testing frequency should continue until water quality is confirmed as being back within specification.

Emergency incident plans need to take into consideration the capability and availability of operational and laboratory personnel. Experience shows that overwhelming laboratories with samples during incident conditions can cause major problems for laboratory quality control and can lead to adverse outcomes. It is important to maintain the quality of laboratory analysis regardless of the urgency of testing. It may be necessary to have contracts in place with back-up laboratories that can provide support during incident or emergency response conditions.