NOTTINGHAM'S INCINERATOR WARNED ABOUT EMISSION BREACHES

The Environment Agency has revealed that Nottingham's Eastcroft Incinerator breached its permit six times over the last six months. The good news is that the Agency has issued a warning, pointing out that these breaches have a maximum penalty of an unlimited fine and/or a prison sentence upto 2 years. The bad news is that they are not going to prosecute.

Some of the breaches are a failure to monitor emissions correctly: - failure to provide valid data for cadmium, thallium, mercury and other heavy metals for the third quarter of 2007 - failure to provide valid data for particulates, PCBs and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons for the whole of Jul-Dec 2007 - failure to provide valid data for chemical oxygen demand discharged to sewer in the fourth quarter - failure to provide data on emissions to air and sewer due in January 2008 until March.

During this time there were a number of 'abnormal emissions' which were actually measured:

carbon monoxide - 'sudden release of a hydro-carbon substance resulted in depletion of the excess oxygen' (i.e. probably explosion of a gas canister)
hydrogen fluoride - probably also caused by dodgy waste
carbon monoxide - caused by boiler tube failure
excess carbon in bottom ash - indicates inadequate combustion, blamed by the operator on use of oil burners to compensate for unpredictable combustion conditions

The Agency has given them until 2009 to install a new grate and combustion system. Last month the incinerator followed this up with a 'filter bypass' in which unfiltered fly ash was spewed over the surrounding area for 5 minutes.

The Agency has declared that this was not a breach of their permit! Last year (before the above breaches), the Agency declared in response to a planning application to expand the incinerator: "the compliance record of WasteNotts (Reclamation) Limited (part of WRG) since issue of the PPC permit has been very good.

Only four instances of failure to comply with emission limit values have occurred since the permit was issued on 22 December 2005..." Details of emission breaches are on the Nottingham Against Incineration & Landfill website at: http://www.nail.uk.net/Emissions.htm