Environmentalists slam pollution plan

Environmentalists slam pollution plan

By Jon Lamb

A coalition of more than 20 environment and community groups from across Australia has condemned the latest draft National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) proposal.

Representatives from the National Toxics Network walked out of talks with the National Environment Protection Council (NEPC) on October 16, condemning the sudden exclusion from the draft of any reference to the dumping of toxic chemicals into sewers, land fills and tailing dams — all major sources of environmental pollution.

The network, which includes Greenpeace Australia, the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of Earth, has been campaigning for five years to establish a system requiring companies to make public their annual toxic pollution records.

The new proposal put forward by the NEPC (a joint federal, state and territory body) would cover only pollution into the air from smokestacks and chimneys. The disposal of toxic waste and chemicals into waterways or land fills would not be made public.

The consequences for a city such as Sydney, which has more than 20,000 licences to discharge waste into sewers, could be disastrous.

"By excluding these pollution routes, Australian governments have turned the National Pollutant Inventory into a Mickey Mouse scheme and left a gaping bolt hole for dirty industries to continue to secretly dump hazardous chemicals into the environment", said Matt Ruchel, Greenpeace national toxics campaign coordinator.

The NEPC proposal excludes the reporting of waste sent for recycling or recovery, and calls on states and territories not to enforce the scheme with fines or penalties. The draft NPI also requires companies to report only 38 listed substances in the first two years and around 98 substances in the year 2000.

In the United States the Toxic Release Inventory requires the mandatory annual reporting of more than 600 toxic substances.

A final proposal for the NPI will be submitted in early 1998 to state and federal environment ministers.

From GLW issue 294