Vol. 3 No. 3 Winter 1995
A Newsletter About New Jersey's Water Quality Programs

Operators of Domestic Treatment Works may have noticed something new with their recent shipment of pre-printed Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMR). In addition to their DMR for reporting effluent quality, pre-printed DMRs have also been sent for reporting sludge quality. These sludge quality DMRs are designed to replace the T-VWX-008 and T-VWX-009 sludge quality assurance reports (SQARS). An annual DMR to replace Form T-VWX-018 for submittal of priority pollutant scan information will also be sent in the near future.

The benefits of using the DMR format over the old SQAR system include increased data entry efficiency and increased data system reliability. So far, there has been a great deal of positive feedback from permittees regarding the new DMR format for reporting sludge quality results. However, the conversion process has not been without its glitches, both internal and external. Some of the most common submittal mistakes include failure to indicate the laboratory certification number at the bottom of the DMR and forgetting to use the less than symbol ("<") when a particular parameter is not present at the level of detection. Please make sure your DMRs do not have these errors.

Most permittees have reacted favorably to the switch from sludge quality reports to DMRs, but what do you think? We would like to hear your comments and suggestions. For additional information or to convey your thoughts, please contact either Anthony Pilawski of the Bureau of Pretreatment and residuals at (609) 633-3823, or Dawn Strano or Debbie Esposti of the Bureau of Permit Management at (609) 984-4428.