New Water Policy and Practice Issue 4, Number 1, Fall 2017 | Page 51

Risk-Based Pesticide Monitoring in Drinking Water Catchments in Western Australia
being effectively managed. Additionally, this has been an informative exercise
to review and confirm the allocation of resources to monitor pesticide risk.
The pesticide research project was presented at the Australian Water Associa-
tion’s OzWater Conference in May 2017, and the associated conference paper
can be referred to for more detailed information (Plant et al. 2017).
Figure 1: The upper (top) and lower (bottom) areas of a trial catchment included in
the pesticide research project. The coloured areas represent the agricultural land in
this catchment. Areas shown in red have a high risk of glyphosate transport through
the catchment three days following a 50 mm rainfall event, compared to areas in
blue. Pesticide sampling efforts were then focused in the high-risk transport areas
circled red, particularly in the lower catchment.
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