Environment Agency Operator Monitoring Scheme Updated to Include Water Releases

From April 2008 the PPC regulations in England and Wales were replaced by the Environmental Permitting Regulations (EPR). EPR is a Better Regulation initiative designed to reduce costs to business and regulators, without changing levels of protection for the environment and human health. All existing PPC permits were automatically transferred to EPR on 1 April 2008 and no action was required by the operator. All new permits are under EPR.

The EA regulates EPR by using a risk-based approach, taking a view of the environment as a whole. The onus is on the operator to take responsibility for their process and for the monitoring of emissions from it.

Operator Monitoring Assessment (OMA) was introduced to strengthen the EA’s auditing of operators’ self-monitoring arrangements. OMA auditing helps to give the EA confidence that self monitoring is robust, accurate and that the data received from operators can be trusted. OMA has been applied for several years to the monitoring of emissions to air from industrial installations regulated under EPR. Significant improvements in air emission monitoring have taken place following the introduction of OMA.

The EA use the OMA scheme to:

• assess the quality and reliability of operators’ self-monitoring (including monitoring undertaken on behalf of operators by contractors) as required by their permit

• identify monitoring shortfalls and potential areas for improvements

• contribute to the targeting and prioritisation of independent monitoring of point source emissions.