ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
seriously consider issuing permits for high-risk outfalls from the road network. This would enable them to control the pollution by dictating the level of treatment that is required to protect the receiving watercourse and requiring that treatment devices be maintained and operated properly. It would also generate an income to allow the Agency to resource the control of the outfalls.
CIWEM’s policy director Alastair Chisholm said: “With political and media attention firmly fixed on sewage and, to a lesser extent agricultural pollution, the toxic and insidious problem of road runoff is driving largely unseen, under the radar.”
reviewed and its results compared with the risk assessments undertaken by the Environment Agency. The report also calls for the government to take seriously its statutory duty to control pollution from the strategic road network. The Department for Transport should include an ambitious settlement for environmental protection in National Highways’ next road budget, and increase the emphasis on the control of pollution at source. The report also asks that the Environment Agency seriously consider the use of its environmental permitting powers to better control highway pollution. The key recommendations of the report are as follows:
■ The Department for Transport must look beyond other important issues
such as road safety and be ambitious on wider issues that are of increasing importance to the public, such as managing the considerable environmental impact of roads.
■ There must be far greater emphasis on the control of pollutants at their
source, including enforcing legislation to control use of PAHs in the manufacture of tyres, and ensuring new Euro 7 Emissions Standards on tyre abrasion limits are properly adopted by manufactures when they come into force in 2025.
■ All new road schemes should include good drainage design, and crucially
provision for effective monitoring, operating and maintenance of drainage and treatment schemes.
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■ The HEWRAT model should be reviewed and its outputs compared
with the risk assessments undertaken by the Environment Agency; we are concerned that there is currently no robust process to systematically prioritise the deployment of appropriate treatment for harmful runoff.
■ A catchment-based approach to assessing risk of harm from highway
outfalls should be adopted, so that the most polluting outfall sources can be prioritised for remedial action and the most cost-effective solutions developed.
■ The introduction of extended producer responsibility levies on
products such as tyres, fuel oils and brake pads should be introduced. This could provide the Department for Transport with greater budget to allow National Highways to install remediation schemes at high risk outfalls.
■ Alternatively, or in addition, the introduction of a Stormwater Utility
Levy should be considered (as used in Germany). Under this mechanism each household pays a monthly fee into a central or regional fund to pay for better management of surface water. This could be set up to give local authorities the power to prioritise and address polluting outfalls within their area, as well as delivering against wider government policy objectives, for example, storm overflows and surface water flooding.
■ The Environment Agency should | June 2024 |
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“Highway pollution is often classified as “diffuse”. It’s anything but – it discharges in often highly concentrated ‘first flushes’ into small streams where the impact on ecology can be severe. And yet it’s not monitored and barely treated or regulated. This is yet another major nail in the coffin of our dying rivers which needs urgent attention.”
Jo Bradley from Stormwater Shepherds UK said “The samples of highway runoff that we have taken over the last 18 months have revealed levels of toxic substances, called polyaromatic hydrocarbons, up to 700 times higher than the legal Standard. This is important because the Standards are set to protect the organisms that live in our rivers and streams from the acute toxic effects of the chemicals. These effects include changes in behaviour so the organisms cannot feed properly; changes to their reproductive success; mutations and, sometimes, death. The fact that this highway runoff pollutes our rivers with these toxic compounds means that the Environment Agency should control the discharges using the permitting regime, but they don’t. It means that they should measure the extent of this pollution, but they don’t. They allow National Highways and other highway authorities to decide for themselves whether or not their runoff is causing pollution and whether or not they need to do anything about it. This isn’t good enough. These discharges are poisoning our rivers and the life within them. It is time that they were properly monitored and controlled. We know how to treat highway runoff. We just need to get on with it.”
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