Question about pollution

angeldaisy

Hi to all you farmers:)

I'm looking for some information that seems to be quite difficult to find,

I'm a 3rd level student studying geography and I'm currently looking into global water quality. I can see that Ireland has very good legislation regarding pollutions, such as run-off from fertilisers etc on agricultural land. BUT do they actually inspect any sites?

Or do they wait for complaints to be made or for problems to happen before inspecting.

So basically what I'm asking is, have any of you farmers, especially those close to a water source, ever been inspected??

Hope you don't mind me asking the question??

whelan1

yes, i have a river through my farm, had epa around last year, as part of your single farm parment and nitrates etc, river should be clean at all times... board of works come round every 10 years or so to clean back the river, we also have county council sewerage being piped along river so they check river regularly too

Bizzum

Inspections are routinely made by a couple of organisations. Some times the farmer knows, many times they are simply routine checks.
From what I see a fair proportion of the problem is caused by those who have the authority to inspect.

blue5000

EPA regularly check rivers at every bridge round here, that way if there is a problem they can pin it down fairly fast. Also have coco priks visiting the yard here, bit ironic really as they are the biggest polluters with inadequate sewage treatment works.

Have you been having fun 'trawling' through the epa website?

yellow50HX

what usually happens round here is the coco sample at thier uptake points (the nearby river supplies a couple of the local towns and villages). If they find anything in the test then they start checking upstream.

was a case a few years back when they found polutants in the river and started pointing fingers at a number of farmers upstream, a number of rather nasty letters were posted. when they called to one lad he showed them around his farmyard to show everything was in order then brought them down to a neaghbouring proptery. This propertry was a group waste treament plant for nearby houses owned and operated by the council which was overflowing into the river. needless to say nothing was said after that.

we were ordered by the council to stop using our slurry tank and carry out a full inspection on it a few years ago after they found polluants downsteam (over a mile away). the same letter was issued to almost all the farms in the area. again the pollutant was traced to a council owned property. our tank was found to be perfect on inspection.

on the whole though we dont have too many issues with them. over the last few years they have started doing better tests and more importanly better checks to pin point any pollution rather then slap section orders left right and centre. i think they know that they themselves are proably the single biggest pollutor so keep it low key.

angeldaisy

Great answers thanks for your replies, I know unfortunately that most of the problems with quality and availability of water lies with the councils, but I was interested to see if they actually followed up on any of those 'beautifully worded' policies of theirs they are so fond of!

Going to be an interesting topic to research;)

iverjohnston

Whereabouts are you located?If in the midlands I could introduce you to a fellow who draws sludge from small plants to larger county plants. some of his observations are hair-raising!

angeldaisy

iverjohnston wrote: »

Whereabouts are you located?If in the midlands I could introduce you to a fellow who draws sludge from small plants to larger county plants. some of his observations are hair-raising!

I'm down in Limerick, I was out at a treatment plant in clare, interesting stuff, but definately small scale processing. How people do those jobs is beyond me!
I find it very frustrating when there are people such as yourselves that really put in the extra mile and then you have those who just blatantly disregard not only the rules but basic common sense and respect.

Glad to hear from people who understand the consequences even though its a pain in the you know what!

merryberry

The Local Authorities are responsible for enforcing the Nitrates Directive, the main instrument in the control of pollution from agricultural sources. However, inspections are carried out by DAFM under cross compliance on behalf of the LA’s. EPA’s role is supervisory and they have a reporting role to DG Environment on its performance.

bob charles

Oh Jesus dont make me start. In the county your in strangely the council isnt the biggest polluter of our waterway but the second biggest. I have some lovely photos of a few of there plants and also dumps, needless to say farmers are causing little or no pollution in the grand scheme of things.

angeldaisy

bob charles wrote: »

Oh Jesus dont make me start. In the county your in strangely the council isnt the biggest polluter of our waterway but the second biggest. I have some lovely photos of a few of there plants and also dumps, needless to say farmers are causing little or no pollution in the grand scheme of things.

Have to agree with you, thankfully things have improved an awful lot here, but in my experience the farmers that are / have caused the problems tend to be the 'old' style farmers, always done it that way and always will. thankfully due to legislations much of this has been managed. However I do wish that the councils would spend as much time sorting out their end of things before pointing the finger at others. They have been mismanaging our water for years, both quality and quantity. I don't understand why on one hand they spend so much on water treatment and testing and yet allow discharge of effluent straight into the water system ( a recent housing estate - close to a river, and several houses have their septic tanks discharging into the stream).
I really don't know why I'm so surprised when I discover these things:eek:

iverjohnston

," I was out at a treatment plant in clare, interesting stuff, but definately small scale processing. How people do those jobs is beyond me! "

Its a job, they are just going through the motions!:D

Iver.

severeoversteer

in general most water sources are highly variable irrespective of whether its caused by pollution or not, one of my engineering lecturers told us that a lot of louths water is from boreholes and that they even had variable amounts of certain trace elements nitrite phosphates sulphur etc despite the borehole being extremely deep. You wouldn't believe how vast the topic of water chemistry is ! :rolleyes: its not as simple as a farmer letting slurry into a river etc.