Get one up on WINEP

Published on by in Technology

Get one up on WINEP

The key objective of the EU Water Framework Directive is to ensure that all water bodies achieve good qualitative and quantitative status. The Chemicals Investigation Programme (CIP) was launched in 2010 to help the water industry and its environmental regulators understand the potential contribution this industry could make to ensuring that Environmental Quality Standards were met. Co-ordinated by UKWIR, CIP comprises a wide-ranging  series of projects that benchmark current environmental performance, prioritise substances of concern and seek to understand upstream and treatment interventions that will best ensure discharge compliance. This programme is also helping to illustrate the magnitude of water industry impact on water body quality within the context of other contributors, such as industry and agriculture.

To date CIP has included investigations at some 600 sewage treatment works and has examined more than 70 substances of interest, including hazards as varied as fire retardants, microplastics, pharmaceuticals and personal care products.  Due to the breadth and nature of the investigations, CIP comprises the largest contemporary scientific evaluation of the impact of anthropogenic sources on UK water quality and will be key to setting and managing future compliance with Environmental Quality Standards.

UKWIR are due to report the findings from the latest phase of CIP in 2022. These will be landmark publications on the occurrence, significance and fates of hazards of relevance to UK water quality and will inform future treatment, operational and regulatory requirements to ensuring sustainable compliance with Environmental Quality Standards. With the Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP) under review, the mechanisms by which the water industry might respond to the CIP programme during PR24 are currently in flux.

Join us on 12th May to examine the impacts of the CIP

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