Monitoring Point Sources of Pollution: Answers and More Questions from Statistical Quality Control

Discharges of pollutants to the environment are best regarded as stochastic, not deterministic.Thus the monitoring of point sources of discharge to determine whether a violation of a discharge standard has occurred can be viewed as a statistical quality control problem.This paper reviews the mechanics of designing an optimal statistical quality control scheme, and evaluates the applicability of such schemes in the environmental monitoring context.Complicating problems particular to environmental monitoring, such as the correct definition of a discharge standard, the measurement of the net benefits of discharge reduction, and the possibility of gaming behavior by the discharger inhibit the practical applicability of optimal statistical quality control programs as a solution to the monitoring problem.