Local Impact Assessment

The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) emphasises the importance of ecotoxicological characterisation in addition to conventional chemical analysis of discharged wastewaters to accurately predict the environmental impact of discharged wastewater on aquatic ecosystems.

To address this, ARCHE Consulting partners with ECOSPHERE Analytics (University of Antwerp), an ISO 17025 accredited lab for ecotoxicological testing of waste and surface water. Together, we can evaluate and interpret effects, impact and risks starting from human activity that undeniably causes pollution, starting from its industrial source through air, water, soil, and sediment, right up to its effects on biological life and human health.

A key ambition of the European Green Deal (EGD) is to protect biodiversity while ensuring a viable industry in the EU. As a result, companies must demonstrate that their activities do not harm local biodiversity. While current chemical risk assessment are expected to protect against negative impacts on biodiversity, they do not directly measure effects on biodiversity. Instead, generic safe thresholds (e.g. water quality criteria) are based on lab tests using a limited number of species, with results extrapolated to the ecosystem level (relevant level for biodiversity) through statistical methods. These tests often fail to capture real-world complexity (mixtures, bioavailability) and may lead to unrealistic “safe” concentrations, hampering industry to operate. To bridge this gap, field data collection through ecosurveillance is essential. Ecosurveillance is the systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of ecosystem health data, combining multiple data sources to support environmental management and policy-making.

ARCHE Consulting and Ghent University developed an Ecosurveillance toolbox to evaluate the local biodiversity impact in a tiered way:

• Tier 1: The use of ecologically relevant mixture risk models

• Tier 2: Classical ecological biomonitoring and calculation of biodiversity indices

• Tier 3:  Application of innovative e-DNA techniques such as metabarcoding on a complex community of diatoms and periphyton growing on an artificial substrate upstream and downstream of an emission point.

ARCHE Consulting co-developed the TRIAD approach now used in Flanders for sediment quality assessment. For over 25 years, our experts have been involved in deriving safe thresholds for contaminants in sediments, assessing contaminant release from the sediment to the overlying water compartment using the SEDIAS and TICKET-UW model and performing bioassays with different benthic organisms.

ARCHE Consulting applies a range of bioassays (e.g. earthworms, plants) to evaluate soil deterioration and the efficacy of nature based non-invasive remediation techniques at contaminated sites/dump sites.