The plans are required from landfill site operators under the Landfill Directive and were due in by July 16 although the Agency is allowing some flexibility. As of last Friday, the Agency had received 429 plans back from around 1,400 site conditioning plan packs it had issued. And although they do not yet know how many plans were returned by the July 16, they have a definite figure for the number of plans they expect to be returned: 1,167.
The Agency says it can predict which operators will not submit plans based on which sites are due to close this year. But they will not know exactly how many plans have been returned (and correctly filled in) until next Monday.
Head of waste at the EA, Steve Lee, said: “We would like to applaud those operators who got their plans into us early.”
But for companies that missed the deadline, the Agency will be accepting applications until August 19.
Closure notices
After this date landfill operators who have not responded will be served with closure notices, while those who applied correctly will be prioritised by type of site and risk posed to people and the environment. Once prioritised, these operators will be asked to apply for a pollution prevention and control permit, beginning with the largest and most hazardous sites, Mr Lee said.
The Agency has been touring the country since January to raise awareness of the requirements of the conditioning plans amongst landfill operators. Although the landfill conditioning plans require operators to class their sites as either hazardous, non-hazardous or inert, the Agency expects most sites currently dealing with hazardous waste to classify themselves as 'hazardous' until 2004. Up to this point, co-disposal will still be permitted.
After July 2004, Mr Lee predicted a sharp decline in hazardous sites, eventually reaching just a tenth of the 240 such sites currently in operation. But the reduction will not be as great as it appears, he said, because many sites today only accept a limited range of substances.
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