A Statistical Method to Determine Pollutant Sources

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a new method enforcing water quality standards. Regulations have been developed by various agencies to maintain healthy water body within their jurisdictions. In the United States, the mechanisms used to do this are discharge permits for each discharger and stream standards for the receiving water body. The traditional approach in the U. S. has been self-monitoring by the discharger coupled with random but infrequent samples collected by the various regulatory groups. The enforcing agencies need an effective program that detects violations efficiently with limited resources.

Prepared for presentation at the 5^th Symposium on “Computer Application for Environment Protection,” Vienna, Austria, September19–21, 1990