SUDS and the Danger of Land Contamination from Spills and Firewater
By Brian M Back, Chairman, Environmental Innovations Limited
Sadly, polluted streams and rivers are daily news stories, however, the sudden or gradual contamination of land seldom makes the headlines.
Scandalously, according to a recent string of surveys, very few people seem to be aware of the risks and obligations that their business has under the various Environmental Directives with respect to protecting the environment from uncontrolled spills or leaks of oils, chemicals and firewater. Even fewer had any idea as to the long-term environmental and financial damage that can result from spills or leaks seeping/entering the actual soil.
If you pardon the pun, the deeper you dig, the worse the story gets. Many people you speak to, especially farmers, readily admit off the record that they have in the past buried the odd leaking barrel of chemicals, the carcasses of dead animals, contaminated soil or demolition waste on their land etc, with little thought of the long term consequences.
Under the new Civil Sanctions and the Environmental Liability Directive (ELD (2004/35/EC) the polluter pays principle applies. As we have all recently witnessed with the United States regulations following the Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, remediation and compensation costs can dwarf the fines and can be financially devastating even to the largest of businesses.
The European laws are exactly the same, simply there is no cap and no escape with the ELD. Also be warned, the Directive clearly states in one of its opening paragraphs that ignorance is no defence. Directors and owners of polluting businesses can also be ultimately made personally liable and can even be jailed. Finally, the liability will follow you and your business, with apparently no time limit should you decide to vacate the site and leave the pollution behind.
|100| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE
Findings that form part of a comprehensive report we are currently compiling, backed up with direct across the table discussions with the Environment Agency that took place this month (January 2011), demonstrate clearly that ignorance is rife across industry. A drastic education programme is required at all levels, across virtually every sector and that even includes environmental consultants and bodies conducting ISO14001 audits. This is especially most evident when you consider the increased risks that have arisen since the introduction of SUDS (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems). We can testify that, from the recent planning application for the construction of our new offices and research facility Local Authorities insisted upon the installation of SUDS drainage.
However, their notes made no mention of pollution risks, other than suggesting that a small oil interceptor may be a good idea to collect the roadway runoff. For readers who are not familiar with SUDS, the idea is that rain that falls on your site should no longer be directed to the public sewers, streams or rivers, but rather dissipated within the land of the site via soakaways. By using soakaways the natural rainwater cycle is restored, with its inherent time delays, substantially reducing the risk of flash floods and sewer spills from storm overloads.
That was the positive side of the story, now for the negative. Just imagine the situation where you have a major spill or fire on your site where you have just installed a 200 cubic meter soakaway for SUDS. Those of you that turn around and say, “but we have a spill kit”, should think again! Have you really considered the probability of being able to cope with a major spill of something soluble that will pass clean through your oil interceptor (if you have one) or, worse still, the runoff from a fire, referred to in the industry as firewater?
Firewater inevitably contains a cocktail of substances. This can include released materials and chemicalS that
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