WET News

Water companies have been required to monitor their wastewater treatment facilities for chemicals 12 WET NEWS DECEmbEr 2015 I n 2010 the UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) organisation and Environ- ment Agency (EA) set up the Chemical Investigations Pro- gramme (CIP1) to uphold European regulations – namely the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the new Priority Substances Directive (PSD), which regulates environmental quality standards. As part of CIP1, water companies in England and Scotland were required to monitor their wastewater treatment facilities for chemicals. The aim was to identify the effect of wastewater treatment processes on the management of the 33 chemicals deemed to be potentially harmful to the environment according to the European Priority Substances Directive. Throughout the course of CIP1, environmental monitoring specialist enitial was contracted by Severn Trent Water to monitor 37 of its sewage treatment works for the presence of the chemicals over an 18-month period with 3,000 samples taken and analysed. enitial's sampling work in CIP1, and its involvement in developing the CIP2 scope of works and technical specifications, meant it was well placed to deliver the Severn Trent CIP2 project. On a much larger scale than CIP1, CIP2 will identify the occurrence, sources and removal of the substances, and delineate the scale of any improvements in effluent quality required in order to meet the objectives under the forthcoming stages of the WFD. CIP2, which started in April and runs until March 2020, will see enitial collect almost 11,000 samples from 130 Severn Trent Water sites. The findings from CIP1, and revisions to the Priority Sub- stances Directive, determined that the detection limits should be set much lower in CIP2 and the list of compounds to be monitored has also been expanded meaning that sam- pling and monitoring has become more complex. Working on numerous Sev- ern Trent Water WwTW and catchment wide sites requires thorough Health and Safety (H&S) operating procedures. To enable the effective manage- ment of these requirements, eni- tial has provided the following: • ISO 17025 accreditation (competence to carry out Sampling the CIP way ONSITE Sampling & monitoring tests and/or calibrations and sampling) • H&S certification and procedures, which have included all site specific H&S assessments at all WwTWs and other sampling locations, adhering to both enitial and Severn Trent Water requirements • Lone worker systems whereby the field technicians have been issued with their own access fobs to each of the WwTWs, enabling time efficient sample collection • Enicip sožware specifically developed to aid sample management from sample collection through to analysis of results. All H&S assessments are stored on Encip, allowing the transferability of the information between field technicians Due to the low limits of detection and high risks of sample contamination in the field, enitial has adhered to the stringent requirements of sampling protocol which are presented in the technical specifications of the programme. Examples of some of the sampling protocol in the field are as follows: • Different sampling equip- ment must be used depending on whether the sample is to be tested for organic or inorganic substances. Metal equip- ment cannot be used for those samples undergoing inorganic analysis (which includes metals) • Field technicians cannot wear ažershave or perfume to ensure there is no risk of contamination During sample collection, the technicians use hand-held tablets in the field, which operate using enitial's bespoke database Enicip. Each sample has a barcode that is scanned and together with photographs of the sample and the site, is uploaded to the Enicip database along with the GPS coordinates. Once the labs have analysed the samples, they send back the results which enitial then uploads to Enicip. This allows for a well monitored and auditable chain of custody from sample collection to results reporting. As Enicip is a • While Cip1 identified how effective treatment methods are at removing certain chemicals from wastewater, Cip2 aims to quantify how many of those substances are discharged. projEcT SpEcS • the Chemical investigation programme 2 (Cip2) is the second phase of a nationwide collaborative project to investigate the occurrence, source and removal of trace substances in WwtW effluents • Severn trent Water Cip2 involves collecting samples from 130 WwtWs, and associated catchment and river sampling locations. • project manage all of the sampling and analysis throughout the course of the five-year sampling period

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