Environment Agency kicks off OPRA framework

Water companies are facing a new water discharge regime today ahead of a widening of the Operator and Pollution Risk Appraisal (OPRA) system to quarries and other firms over the next four years.

Based on the Government’s Better Regulation agenda, the OPRA system from the Environment Agency (EA) uses risk appraisal and operator self-monitoring to apportion charges to firms based on an activity’s risk level and the company’s environmental performance.

Charges will be levied on the “polluter-pays” principle starting with the water firms, which are responsible for 70% of the UK’s discharges to water. Quality of discharges will be the responsibility of the operator under EA auditing.

Quarries and mineral abstraction activities with discharge consents will be part of the simplified OPRA. This will mean that all the risk attributes are fixed and OPRA scores will only change annually on the basis of compliance with a company's consent.

An Agency spokesperson told MQR: “We plan to change charges in April 2009 and base them on OPRA scores when we introduce a new charging scheme under our Unified Charging Framework. “The details of these future charges will be the subject of a consultation in September this year. Operator self monitoring will apply to these discharges, but not until April 2012,” she said.