Sample Management and Laboratory Testing - Ian Rippin

The National Laboratory Service (NLS) recently announced its largest set of commercial contracts to date after having been appointed by UK Water operators to assist in the preparation for the adoption of the latest EU water legislation. Ian Rippin, Commercial Director at the NLS, describes how the programme will work in the new regulatory landscape.

The Chemical Investigations Programme
The UK Water Chemical Investigations Programme (CIP) is a massive scale environmental testing programme facilitated by the UK Water Industry Research organisation in collaboration with the Environment Agency. The CIP is an investigation into the management and control of ‘priority substances’ and other pollutants. In this context, ‘priority substances’ are defined in the Priority Substances Daughter Directive (PSDD), which supports the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD).

At the heart of the WFD and its daughter directives exists the establishment of Environmental Quality Standards (EQSs); values that have been determined for all EU water bodies, which define if concentrations of chemical contaminants are considered of ‘good chemical status’.

Although water companies are not solely responsible for taking measures to meet these EQSs, they are required to assess the contribution their actions have on contaminant loads present in receiving waters. The CIP was launched to aid this by gathering data that will provide for a much clearer understanding of the frequency, concentration and behaviour of ‘priority substances’ throughout the wastewater treatment cycle. With the data captured, the measures to be implemented into the next cycle of the WFD, from 2014 forwards, can be more tailored to the cause.

The collaboration between water companies for the delivery of the CIP was essential to the collection of test data in a cost effective way. As part of the partnership the individual water companies will not have to assess the treatment options separately and they are able to share the data delivered by the whole programme.

The CIP for each individual water company will vary dependent on the extent and complexity of their regional networks, however it is expected that over 20,000 samples will be taken over the duration of the programme, breaking down into 6,000 sewage effluents, 8,000 catchment samples, 5,000 Wastewater Treatment Work process samples and 1,000 sludge samples.

Having started in 2010, the CIP is now in delivery with the majority of data expected before the middle of 2012. Given the size and complexity of the programme, the majority of water companies have decided to outsource the entirety of their CIP sample collection and associated laboratory analysis.