Sharon Mertens

Sharon Mertens has over 35 years of experience in environmental testing and management. Currently, she is the Director of the Water Quality Protection Division for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, an agency servicing 28 communities. Ms. Mertens has overall management responsibility for environmental monitoring and testing for a variety of programs and departments serving the Milwaukee metropolitan area. These include the Industrial Waste Pretreatment Program, Conveyance Monitoring System, Freshwater Monitoring Program, Groundwater Monitoring Program, and Central Laboratory. She has been with the District for 15 years.

Ms. Mertens is a leader in the area of laboratory accreditation and development of standards for environmental testing laboratories. She has been a member of the Board of Directors for The NELAC Institute (TNI), since 2006. She served as the Board Chair for four years. Her activities with TNI also include the Laboratory Accreditation Bodies Expert Committee as committee chair, TNI Finance Committee and other special ad hoc assignments. She has been active in other advisory groups pertaining to environmental analysis and laboratory standards including WEF Lab Practices, Wisconsin DNR Laboratory Certification Standards Review Council, Milwaukee Interagency Clean Water Advisory Council and other ad hoc committees.

Ms. Mertens was the Laboratory Director of STL Austin, formerly Radian International. This laboratory, located in Austin, Texas, was a full service commercial environmental laboratory with a staff of over 80 chemists and other scientists.

In her 15 years at Radian International, LLC, Ms Mertens had a variety of additional project and management experiences.
These include;
• Staff and Facilities Coordinator for Radian Electronic Systems (RES) specializing in electronic measurement technologies.
• Project management roles in projects including laboratory evaluation for the DOE, method evaluation for the Gas Research Institute, permitting of industrial furnaces and hazardous waste incinerators; process development, compliance and demonstration of technologies.
She has experience as a bench analyst performing gas chromatography, HPLC, GCMS and other measurement technologies.

She received her Bachelor's of Science Degree from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in the late 1970's.

Contact Information: smertens@mmsd.com; 414-277-6384