Hunter Water owns and operates three offshore ocean outfalls for wastewater treatment plants on the Hunter Coast. The Burwood Beach ocean outfall is one of the only outfalls in Australia which still discharges biosolids to ocean. Since 2011, Worley has been monitoring a range of marine ecological and environmental endpoints to assess the long term impacts of the operation of the ocean outfalls on the receiving marine environment. Studies have been designed to meet the New South Wales Environment Protection Authorities licence monitoring requirements and aim to establish any gradient of impact of the outfalls on the receiving environment, the overall impact footprint and predict the footprint of any proposed future discharges. Studies undertaken to assess long term impacts of the ocean outfalls include fish ecology, benthic reef ecology, benthic infauna ecology, water and sediment quality assessments, ecotoxicology, bioaccumulation and nitrogen isotope studies. Traditional and emerging monitoring and assessment techniques have been adopted for the project and are constantly evolving. Traditional taxonomic studies for fish, plankton and infauna are now being complemented with e-DNA assessment while direct toxicity assessments are being complemented with novel bioassay techniques for marine ecotoxicology assessment.