New publications this month:
ENVIRONMENT AGENCY
MCERTS: performance standard for continuous ambient air quality monitoring systems
This document has been updated to reflect current BS EN standards for NOx, SO2, O3 and CO monitoring.
Updated Standard rules permits
SR2015 number 18: metal recycling, vehicle storage, depollution and dismantling facility
This new standard rules authorises eligible parties to operate a metal recycling site and a vehicle depollution and dismantling facility at a given location.
Standard rules permits for the following facilities were updated in December 2015. These rules apply to existing permits from 1 March 2016:
clinical waste and healthcare waste transfer station (75Kte)
household, commercial and industrial waste transfer station (75Kte)
clinical waste and healthcare waste treatment and transfer station (75Kte)
materials recycling facility (75Kte)
non-hazardous mechanical biological (aerobic) treatment facility (75Kte)
household, commercial and industrial waste transfer station with treatment (75Kte)
household, commercial and industrial waste transfer station with treatment (no building)
mobile plant for the treatment of soils and contaminated material, substances or products
asbestos waste transfer station
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) authorised treatment facility excluding ozone depleting substances (75Kte)
anaerobic digestion facility including use of the resultant biogas
Exemption guidance
General binding rules: small sewage discharge to the ground
This guidance document has been updated to make it clearer which customers require a permit for small sewage discharges to ground.
Waste exemption: D7 burning waste in the open
This exemption guidance has been updated to make it clear that householders burning their own garden waste are not required to register this exemption.
Waste exemption: T6 treating waste wood and waste plant matter by chipping, shredding, cutting or pulverising
This exemption guidance has been updated to make it clear that this exemption is not required for tree and forestry maintenance work where chipped and shredded wood is left or removed.
Man handed jail term over illegal waste operation
Mohammed Akram, 57, of Rochdale, was found guilty of three environmental offences relating to unlawful handling and export of hazardous waste and involvement in an illegal waste operation
A discharge of foam in the watercourse was traced where more than a hundred, 1,000-litre plastic containers were found stored. A large number of grab bags labelled “toxic”, “harmful to the aquatic environment” and “soluble lead compound” were also found.
Crystal Recycling Ltd was also operating on the site, a waste business run by Mohammed Akram and Asif Ali. Despite the site not having an environmental permit or planning permission for a waste facility, the firm received hazardous waste for export.
He was sentenced at Bradford Crown Court on Tuesday 1 December after pleading guilty.
Breach and penalty
Akram was sentenced to six months in custody on each offence, to run concurrently, suspended for two years. He was disqualified from being a director for five years and ordered to pay £20,000 in legal costs.
Suffolk slurry pollution leads to fine
The owners Great Lodge Farm Ltd were found guilty of being negligent.
In December 2014 staff from the Environment Agency saw the river running dark brown and there was a slurry smell. They traced it to Bowling Green Farm at Sibton where slurry was being pumped from a storage lagoon into a ditch.
Pig muck was to be brought to the farm from another farm and was to be stored on a muck pad that drained to the slurry lagoon.
Ms Wendy Foster, prosecuting for the Agency, said that ammonia levels were elevated for 10 kilometres of the river.
She told the court that the checks carried out by the company, prior to ordering the discharge were insufficient.
Staff at the farm blocked the culvert with soil from the farm at the suggestion of Agency staff, the court heard, but by that time the river was already polluted.
A director of Great Lodge Farms Martin Kelleway told investigators that staff had not been able to spread the slurry because the fields were too wet so it had to be stored. The lagoon was full of what he thought was just rainwater so discharged it into the ditch to free up space for the muck pad being used.
Ms Foster told magistrates that slurry in the lagoon was grossly polluting and once discharged raised ammonia levels, in one tributary of the river, to 25.4mg/l. Typically, clean river water has ammonia levels of less than 1mg/l.
The company pleaded guilty to: On or about 9 December 2014 you did cause poisonous, noxious or polluting matter, namely trade effluent, to enter inland freshwaters, namely the River Yox, at Sibton, Suffolk without being authorised by an environmental permit
The company from Framlingham was fined £6,000 and ordered to pay £4,474 costs after pleading guilty to breaching regulations 12(1)(b) and 38(1)(a) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010.
Regulation 12(1)(a) states that a person must have an environmental permit to operate a regulated facility or cause or knowingly permit a water discharge activity or groundwater activity.
Further, Regulation 38(1)(a) states that it is an offence to breach regulation 12(1)(a).
Northern Ireland Water Ltd fined £7,500 at Downpatrick Magistrates' Court
Northern Ireland Water Ltd was found guilty of causing a polluting discharge of sewage effluent from Saintfield Waste Water Treatment Works to Carson’s Dam River.
On 23 May 2014 the Water Quality Inspector observed sewage sludge on the stream-bed and a discoloured discharge from the Waste Water Treatment Works.
Samples taken at the time of the incident confirmed that the discharge contained poisonous, noxious or polluting matter which was potentially harmful to fish life in the receiving waterway. Approximately 600 metres of the Carson’s Dam River were visibly polluted.
Northern Ireland Water was charged under Article 7(1)(a) of the Water (Northern Ireland) Order 1999 with the offence of making a polluting discharge to a waterway.
Article 7(1)(a) states that it is an offence for a person to, whether knowingly or otherwise, discharge or deposit any poisonous, noxious or polluting matter into a waterway or water contained in any underground strata.
