28th April 2009 Two-metre
high waves, combined with the high tide,
don’t threaten to breach the defences, but
are likely to go over the top of them in
places.
Environment Agency staff
will be testing their response to a possible
tidal flooding emergency on the Lincolnshire
coast on Tuesday (28 April) and will face
just this scenario.
The exercise, dubbed
Operation Armageddon, is taking place at
a number of locations throughout Lincolnshire
and at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.
These include:
• Sutton on Sea – when the team arrive to
shut the Sea Gate, they are unable to do
so because of vandalism.
• Barton – when the team arrive to fit stop
logs (steel plates slotted into grooves)
on the footbridge near Tesco car park to
prevent the tidal surge in Buck Beck Estuary
flooding the local roads and property –
vandals have again made it impossible to
do so.
• At Boston, when the team arrives to close
Jessops Key Floodgate, on South Terrace,
they find that the gate has been removed.
• At Wisbech, the floodgates will be closed
and Gate 103 on the left bank of the Tidal
Nene, close to North End in the town, is
open and jammed.
Other incident response
exercises are also taking place at East
Halton, Gibraltar Point, Spalding and Gedney
Drove End, near Holbeach.
John Ryland, of the Environment Agency Operations
Delivery team, said: “This is one of a series
of exercises to make sure we are ready to
respond to all kinds of incidents should
the worst happen, including coast and river
flooding and pollution.
“Teams will be expected
to respond to the mock incidents that are
taking place on Tuesday by closing the gaps
in the sea defences. It is a great way to
test our operational response to flood risk
incidents.”
The objectives of the
exercise are:
• To test the Environment
Agency’s ability to respond with staff,
machinery and materials.
• To test the readiness of emergency equipment
and materials.
• To test written procedures to do with
emergency response.
• To test staff competence.
In addition, the exercises
will test communications between field teams,
flood incident duty officers and managers
during an incident and check that health
and safety procedures are adequate and followed
during an incident.
Company fined for dangerous
storage of hazardous waste
A hazardous waste company
receives over 45,000 GBP in fines and costs
for potentially dangerous breaches of its
permit.
27 April 2009 Envirosol
Limited of Thornleigh Trading Estate, Blowers
Green Road, Dudley pleaded guilty at Dudley
Magistrates Court to three charges in relation
to breaches of their Environmental Permit
between November 2007 and January 2008.
Envirosol Limited was
fined 12,000 GBP for each of the three offences
and ordered to pay costs of 9,470.21 GBP
along with a victim surcharge of 15 GBP.
The charges were brought by the Environment
Agency under Regulation 32(1)(b) and (2)
of the Pollution Prevention and Control
(England and Wales) Regulations 2000 (‘the
PPC Regulations’).
For the Environment
Agency, Counsel Barry Berlin told the court
that Envirosol Ltd operates a hazardous
waste transfer facility, under a permit
granted under the PPC Regulations. It handles
and stores most types of hazardous wastes
including corrosives, flammables and toxics.
During a routine site
inspection on the 2 November 2007, a number
of significant breaches were found, including
incorrect storage of incompatible hazardous
wastes which, if mixed together, could have
caused a fire or explosion and the release
of toxic gases. Several lead acid batteries
were also loose and scattered about the
site, providing a source of potential ignition.
A further inspection
on the 6 December 2007 once again found
serious breaches, including drums venting
fumes, waste containers which did not have
lids or caps secure and in place, and inadequate
segregation of incompatible wastes, including
laboratory smalls which should have been
dealt on the day of arrival. Envirosol vowed
to act quickly to resolve these issues.
A third consecutive inspection of the site
on the 3 January 2008, found it still operating
over capacity and in a poor state. Incompatible
wastes had been received into site before
Christmas and stored together without proper
assessment and testing being carried out.
Because of the risk
posed, the Environment Agency chose to impose
a Suspension Notice prohibiting receipt
of further wastes until the issues were
resolved. This was lifted the following
day when the officer was satisfied that
the risks had been reduced by separating
and storing the wastes more effectively.
Speaking after the case,
Iain Storer, an Environment Agency officer
involved in the investigation said: “These
charges were brought because Envirosol continued
to operate below acceptable standards which
posed a significant risk of incidents occurring.
We have a duty to take action where we believe
there is a risk to the environment or human
health.
“This action will demonstrate
to hazardous waste operators that we are
determined to ensure that they work to the
Best Available Techniques that we have set
out for them in our guidance, the aims of
which are to prevent incidents from occurring,
or to minimise the consequences of any that
do. I’m pleased to say that Envirosol have
since acted to provide additional resources
and improved their standards of operation.”
On behalf of Envirosol,
Counsel Mark Harris put forward mitigation
including the fact that the defendant company
had pleaded guilty at the first opportunity,
they had no previous convictions and that
no actual environmental harm was caused.
In addition, the company
had co-operated fully with the Environment
Agency and had taken significant steps,
at considerable cost, to ensure that there
would be no repetition of the events that
gave rise to the prosecution.
