San Mateo County Environmental Health
Certified Unified Program Agency (CUPA)
CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING SYSTEM (CERS)
In 2008, the State of California enacted Assembly Bill (AB) 2286. This legislation requires the State’s Secretary for Environmental Protection to establish an electronic information management system known as the California Environmental Reporting System (CERS). CERS officially became available to authorized users on January 1, 2010 via the State’s website. AB 2286 also includes provisions for a new statewide Unified Program E-Reporting Surcharge that became effective July 1, 2009.
The San Mateo County CUPA must develop a method to accept electronic data for specified CUPA program forms no later than January 1, 2013. The electronic data must also be reported by this agency to CERS. At this time, the CUPA programs affected by CERS include the Hazardous Materials Business Plan Program and the Underground Storage Tank Program. The Hazardous Waste Generator Program will also have electronic forms on CERS but this is currently under development.
For additional information regarding CERS and to obtain the San Mateo County CUPA Electronic Reporting User Authorization Form you can click on the respective link referenced below.
What Are the Next Steps? The owner or designated representative of the regulated facility must submit the Electronic Reporting User Authorization Form in order to authorize new and/or additional users on CERS and to delete existing users. The information on the form must be complete and accurate and will be used by this agency for verification purposes.
The San Mateo County CUPA will either approve or deny any Pending Facility Requests submitted to CERS based on the information on the completed form. Following approval the authorized user associated with a specific site(s) can begin entering data into CERS. If the request is denied, you will receive an email regarding the reason for denying the request.
Please be aware that until further notice, the San Mateo County CUPA will not review and approve of the CERS documents online.
Regulated businesses must continue to print, sign and submit a hard copy of the completed documents to the San Mateo County CUPA. The Hazardous Materials Business Plan including emergency response, employee training and site map sections must be submitted in duplicate for a complete submittal.
Access to the CERS website and submittal of electronic documents is on a voluntary basis and does not equate to regulatory compliance until the San Mateo County CUPA notifies you that hard copy documents are no longer accepted, or January 1, 2013, whichever is first.
If you have any questions or comments regarding CERS and/or the user authorization process, please contact us at your earliest convenience. The San Mateo County CUPA can be reached at (650) 372-6200. For more specific questions you can also contact the HMBP Program Specialist, Dirk Jensen, at (650) 372-6262.
