MONROVIA, CA, Jan. 15, 2008 -- MWH Laboratories, a leading U.S. water testing laboratory, announced today that it has been awarded a one-year contract with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality to provide water quality testing services to more than 400 drinking water utilities throughout Arizona. Under this contract, MWH Laboratories will be responsible for sample collection and quarterly and annual testing for these systems to ensure compliance with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Safe Drinking Water Act.
The work is being carried out as part of the Monitoring Assistance Program (MAP), which is conducted each calendar year to test systems serving less than 10,000 people for regulated volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), regulated synthetic organic chemicals (SOCs), and regulated inorganic chemicals (IOCs). MAP, which has been in place since 1998, creates economies of scale to minimize costs to these small utilities by contracting in bulk. Because of the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the program, it was expanded in recent years to include testing for asbestos, radionuclides, nitrite, nitrate, sulfate and nickel.
MWH has supported MAP for six of the last nine annual contract terms. Work will be managed out of MWH's Scottsdale, Ariz. office, with samples shipped to Monrovia, Calif., for analysis.
"MWH Laboratories is pleased to partner with the State of Arizona for the MAP 2008 effort," said Dr. Andrew Eaton, vice president and laboratory director for MWH Laboratories. "The Department of Environmental Quality's ongoing efforts to make these vital testing services affordable and accessible for small communities are commendable and we are proud to be a part of the program."
MWH Laboratories has had an office in Arizona since 1997 and is currently performing, or has recently performed, testing services for the cities of Flagstaff, Glendale, Mesa, Peoria, Phoenix, Tempe, Tucson and Yuma, and the Central Arizona Project, which provides Colorado river water to Phoenix and Tucson area communities and banks water for future use.
MWH Laboratories' 35,000-square-foot analytical testing facility is located in Monrovia, Calif., where more than 120 leading chemists, microbiologists and scientists are employed.
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