Sira Certification Service (SCS) has been appointed to operate the MCERTS scheme on behalf of the Environment Agency
The Environment Agency's Monitoring Certification Scheme (MCERTS) for environmental monitoring equipment and services has been extended to cover continuous water monitoring systems (CWMs).
The Environment Agency is the environmental regulator for the water industry.
The water industry supplies around 15 billion litres of water per day to the population of England and Wales. It also collects and disposes of over 10 million tonnes of waste water every day.
To do this the industry has over 350,000 km of sewers, 6,000 discharges from sewage treatment works and 25,000 intermittent discharges.
Sira Certification Service (SCS) is appointed to operate the MCERTS scheme on behalf of the Environment Agency.
In October 2002 SCS extended its schedule of accreditation from UKAS to include continuous water monitors, covering the performance standards for flow, turbidity, pH, total ammonia, chemical oxygen demand, total organic carbon, dissolved oxygen, total phosphorous, nitrate and total oxidised nitrogen, and automatic sampling equipment.
Sira Certification Service has a governing body made up of nominated representatives from trade associations, instrument users, and the Agency.
The governing body is responsible for ensuring that the performance of SCS meets the requirements of the international standard EN 45011. This new accreditation will enable Sira to certify continuous water monitors (CWMs) to performance standards with immediate effect.
In future, the Agency will require operators with sites falling under the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive to use MCERTS certified automatic sampling systems.
The Agency will use MCERTS to set the standards for the CWMs as these requirements are introduced.
Information about the new MCERTS standards for CWMs can be obtained from the Environment Agency's website: www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/mcerts/.
