A continuous water quality monitoring project has been honored with the 'Pollution Mitigation Initiative of the Year' award at the Water Industry Awards. In collaboration with Meteor Communications, APEM Group spearheaded a water quality monitoring initiative on the River Kent near Kendal in the Lake District. This project was established to ensure the protection of water quality as treated water was discharged into the river via a temporary outfall pipe at a new location, following the damage of the original outfall by Storm Desmond in 2015.

Hannah Austin, Divisional Director of Water Science at APEM Group, expressed her pride in the team, stating, “I am immensely proud of the team that brought this amazing project to life. It’s great to see the tangible benefits to our rivers that monitoring data and evidence-led decision making bring. For APEM Group and our partners at Meteor Communications to be nationally recognised for this innovative work is a remarkable achievement.”

The WIA judges praised APEM Group’s entry as “both very relevant and innovative, while also presenting a positive message about pollution mitigation.” They noted it as “a scalable solution to enhance pollution control and meet future demands, presenting significant benefits.”

A critical component of the project was the deployment of Meteor ESNET water quality monitoring stations, installed and maintained by Meteor Communications to provide real-time water quality data both upstream and downstream of the temporary outfall. Matt Dibbs, Managing Director of Meteor Communications, who attended the awards ceremony, remarked, “We were delighted that the scalability of our water monitoring solutions has been recognised as these systems meet the river monitoring requirements of the Environment Act’s Section 82. This project therefore represents a blueprint for the large number of monitoring systems that water companies will establish in the upcoming AMP period.”