WWEM Water/Wastewater Monitoring Event

Telford, UK -- WWEM 2006 took place in early November and was almost unrecognisable in comparison to the inaugural 2005 event.

WWEM was initially created to provide a vehicle for discussing and dispersing information on the Environment Agency’s monitoring certification scheme, MCERTS. However, on the evidence of WWEM 2006, it has become a red letter diary entry for anyone involved with testing or monitoring water. With a choice of conferences, twice as many exhibition stands and four times as many visitors, WWEM has become a meeting place for the whole sector.

In addition to an update on MCERTS, one of the key issues to emerge at WWEM was the Environment Agency’s plans for modernisation of regulation. This was explained by EA policy manager Andy Rogers, who said: “Whilst river and bathing water quality has been improving and the number of pollution incidents has fallen in recent years, there is still a great deal more to do.”

Following the Hampton Report, Rogers explained that the Agency is looking to simplify regulation and move to a more risk-based approach, so that resources can be applied where the environmental threat is the greatest. This, he said, will be facilitated by the ‘OPRA’ (Operator and Pollution Risk Appraisal) risk-screening tool, which will apply to all regulatory regimes by 2008”

Outputs from this methodology are already built into the charging scheme for the PPC regulatory regime and it is now being developed for discharge consents to water, according to the EA policy manager.

The OPRA scheme has five attributes. Three reflect the environmental hazard of the operation (including its location); the fourth measures Operator performance. Each attribute has been divided into five bands A to E, where A equates to the need for lower regulatory oversight required and E the need for more regulatory oversight required. These bands are then carried forward to generate the OPRA Banded Profile for the discharge consent.

The fifth attribute only comes into effect when the consent is issued and measures the compliance of the operator with the consent conditions. This score is combined with the OPRA Banded Profile to increase the overall score for poor performers and decrease it for good performers.

Operators will be able to reduce charges if they can lower their OPRA score. The Environment Agency will use OPRA scores to target compliance assessment effort. In addition it plans to revise the approach to compliance assessment with an increased reliance on process control and self-monitoring. The Environment agency will be consulting on its proposals for OPRA and compliance assessment at the end of November, this year.

Paul Wiggins from the Environment Agency has been responsible for the implementation of MCERTS in the aquatic sector. His presentation outlined the list of instrument manufacturers that now have MCERTS certificates for their products explaining “MCERTS is implicit within process authorisations so these companies can hope to benefit as a result of their certification.”

In addition, since the introduction of the MCERTS Self monitoring of effluent flow scheme over 2000 site conformity certificates have been awarded , mainly in the water industry, but the scheme is now being rolled out to the rest of industry.

Wiggins also outlined the Agency’s audit scheme for self monitoring Operator Monitoring Assessment ‘OMA’ which has revealed considerable numbers of areas for improvement and some organisations have even included the results of the OMA in their performance-related pay.

WWEM also featured an Analytical conference that discussed laboratory analysis techniques in Water and Environmental monitoring. Presentations from both practising scientists and instrument company representatives gave rise to stimulating discussions relating to applications of the techniques presented in the real world.

Technologies from sample preparation techniques through to actual methods of separation and detection, involving advanced GCxGC-TOF/MS and LC with various MS options were presented along with discussions regarding interpretation of the obtained spectra.

The use of Chemiluminescence to determine Total Bound Nitrogen levels and a `blue sky` presentation on the potential of Biomolecules in wastewater analysis rounded off a successful conference.

WWEM included a Gala Presentation Dinner at which Catherine Wright, Head of Monitoring for the Environment Agency, thanked the industry for all of its help and cooperation in the development of MCERTS.

Product MCERTS certificates were awarded to HACH LANGE, Partech, Teledyne ISCO, Aquamatic, Pollution and Process Monitoring and GE Sensing. In addition, three MCERTS certificates were awarded to effluent flow monitoring installation inspectors.

The next WWEM event will be held in November 2008.