Release date: June 7, 2012
BATON ROUGE – Accredited and in-house laboratories that submit data to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality will be required to adhere to new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. EPA recently updated its “Guidelines Establishing Test Procedures for the Analysis of Pollutants Under the Clean Water Act; Analysis and Sampling Procedures”, also known as the “Method Update Rule”. The new rule was published on May 18, 2012 and will take effect on June 18, 2012.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality will implement the Method Update Rule as follows:
- Accredited and in-house laboratories submitting data to the Department are expected to take steps to meet the requirements of the Rule; in the case of accredited laboratories, applications to amend the scope of accreditation must be submitted and quality system documents must be revised as needed so that the laboratories will be compliant within a year or by the time of their next biennial assessment (whichever comes first).
The Department will accept data based on the previous Method Update Rule (2007) up to but not beyond a two year period ending June 18, 2014.
For a copy of the rule, please access this link: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-05-18/html/2012-10210.htm.
For more information on the changes please contact Paul Bergeron at 225-219-3247 or at