560 serious pollution incidents in a year
Environment Agency reveals that number of significant pollution incidents in 12 months to September 2011 exceeded its target.
The latest update to the Environment Agency’s (EA) corporate scorecard reveals that there were 560 serious and significant pollution incidents (category 1 and 2) in the 12 months to September 2011.
The agency says that 42% of the incidents were from regulated facilities, and, of these, 69% were from waste management sites, 20% from the water industry, 5% from manufacturing and 4% from agriculture.
The EA is planning a significant new programme of pollution prevention campaigns, harnessing the efforts and resources of partners and targeted at regulated and unregulated sites, which is due to begin in April.
The agency believes the campaign will have an impact on the level of incidents and it is also looking at other measures to identify and address their causes. The number of category 1 and 2 pollution incidents in the 12 months to September is slightly above the agency’s target, which was 555.
As part of its corporate plan, the EA is aiming to reduce the number of such incidents by 5% year on year.