Irish Times - 11-08-05
EPA criticised over incident at plant in Cork
Barry Roche, Southern Correspondent in Cork

The Environmental Protection Agency was criticised by public representatives yesterday for failing to inform the public of a second incident at a pharmachem plant in Cork harbour, despite a promise just last week to review its methods of informing people.

Fine Gael Cllr Tim Lombard strongly criticised the EPA for not informing the community in Ringaskiddy about the incident at GlaxoSmithKline's plant where waste material intended for incineration ended up in a waste-water treatment plant by mistake.

"This incident was discovered in April and reported to the EPA and nobody was told until August. Like with the spillage of caustic soda at ADM last month, the EPA is telling us nothing - nobody knows what's going into Cork harbour at this stage," he said.

Last week, EPA deputy director general Dr Padraic Larkin told a public meeting in Cork that the agency would review its method of informing the public after it was criticised for not going public on the spillage of 255 tonnes of caustic soda at the ADM plant in Ringaskiddy.

The public only became aware of the spillage after it was brought to the attention of Mr Lombard, but Dr Larkin told the meeting organised by the Green Party that the EPA was "probably not as pro-active as we should be in terms of keeping the public informed".

Yesterday, Mr Lombard called on Minister for the Environment Dick Roche to review the operation of the EPA and said the agency should be out monitoring the pharmachem industries rather than depending on the industries to carry out their own monitoring and report any incidents.

Cork South Central Green Party TD, Dan Boyle also criticised the EPA for its handling of the latest incident and said it further undermined public confidence in the agency's ability to properly police the pharmachem sector in Cork harbour.

Meanwhile, GSK yesterday confirmed that there had been an incident at its nanomilling plant at Currabinny, Carrigaline, which had gone undetected from July 15th, 2004 until April 15th, 2005, and which resulted in waste material going through the wrong pipe system.

The error in assigning and labelling the pipeline resulted in waste material made up of 99 per cent water and less than 1 per cent organic residues being sent to the waste-water treatment plant instead of going to incineration, a GSK spokeswoman said.

The error was detected during a routine maintenance operation and it was immediately disconnected. The matter was reported to the EPA, she said. "It's on a pipebridge some 15-20ft above ground level - if it was on ground level, the error would have been spotted straight away . . . we regret the error - there was a genuine breakdown in communication between the various teams putting in the pipe."

The waste-water plant was monitored on a daily basis with samples being taken from the harbour and there was no impact and there was no change in the state of the bacteria being used in the waste-water treatment plant which would have indicated a problem, she said.

A spokesperson for the agency said EPA inspectors visited the GSK site on April 29th to confirm that all pipeline work had been carried out and requested an impact assessment which the company provided on May 18th.

It showed that aqueous waste sent to the treatment plant had been adequately treated and this was confirmed by toxicity tests carried out by GSK and the EPA sampling on emissions from the waste-water treatment plant.

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