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Legal actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) in 2007 led to organisations paying €1 million to stop
their businesses breaching environmental legislation, according
to the EPA’s annual report for 2007.
According to the report (Click
Here), a large chunk of the money was spent on improving
waste water treatment plants and carrying out a range of environmental
improvement works on-site.
The EPA also recouped more than
€160,000 in fines and costs after taking rogue operators to
court.
Of the 12 cases which reached the
District courts, convictions were handed down in 11 cases.
' The majority of the cases related to persistent breaches
of emission limit values, failure to install infrastructure,
providing false and misleading information or notifying the
EPA of incidents as required under licence conditions
- the EPA said in its report.
At the end of 2007, the EPA had
33 district court cases 'on hand'.
The agency, under its new role
as the supervisory authority for public drinking water supplies,
also assessed 101 notifications received under the new drinking
water regulations and served 22 directions on sanitary authorities
about drinking water issues - including one to Galway City
Council in relation to the Cryptosporidium crisis,
which occurred in March 2007 (Click
Here).
Elsewhere, the EPA said it found
that 57% of groundwater it tested over the 12-month period
was contaminated by faecal coliforms and 25% of those
waters exceeded national guidelines for nitrate concentration.
It also said the number of fish
kills around the country, while down on 2005, remained at
an unacceptably high level.
The EPA reported that there are
now 300 old waste sites dotted around Ireland - typically,
what were known in the past as town dumps. 'There are also
a much smaller number of illegal dumps, most of which were
created between 1998 and 2002 and which mainly contain construction
and demolition waste' - it added.
It said it had put together a code
of practice with guidelines to local authorities on how to
identify and deal with such sites.
To download the EPA Annual Report
for 2007 - Click
Here
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