The European Union has found that signing environmental treaties is one thing; verifying compliance is quite another.
The European Union has found that signing environmental treaties is one thing; verifying compliance is quite another.
Currently, the EU lacks a pollutant release and transfer register (PRTR) comparable with established systems in Australia and Canada, or the US Toxics Release Inventory.
The European Environment Agency made a start in 2004, using data that member states must provide under legislation including the Directive on integrated pollution prevention and control. This involved 50 pollutants from industrial activities at 10 000 plants in the then 15 EU states.
Next, the EU plans a ’coherent, integrated, publicly accessible’ PRTR for the enlarged EU of 25 states, using a format laid down in a 2003 pan-European agreement brokered by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UN-ECE).
Legislation approved by the European parliament in July imposes new reporting obligations for 90 pollutants: 2007 will be the first reporting year, leading to publication of the first European PRTR in 2009.
EU states are already making preparations - a task sometimes complicated by differing reporting systems within their own borders.
The UK needs to align divergent inventories operated by the Environment Agency in England and Wales; the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and the Northern Ireland Environment Service.
After deleting redundant requirements, Whitehall envisages a net increase from 129 to 154 in the number of substances for which atmospheric emission reports will be mandatory for PRTR and domestic purposes; for the aquatic environment, an increase from 77 to 104 is foreseen.
The European Chemical Industry Council has warned against release of raw data which they say could be ’misleading or meaningless’. Arthur Rogers
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