The waste company was named twice in the Agency's list of the ten “worst performing licensed waste management facilities in 2002” last week at its annual Spotlight on Business Environmental Performance event (see letsrecycle.com story). The Spotlight was meant to “name and shame” polluting companies by attracting national publicity.
But Shanks has now denied the two highlighted sites were poorly managed and damned the Agency's new Operator Performance Appraisal (OPA) scoring system as “totally misleading”.
OPA is part of the Agency's Operator and Pollution Risk Appraisal (OPRA) for waste scores. OPRA consists of two parts: an Environmental Appraisal, which assesses environmental risk at a site, and the OPA, which judges operator performance.
The former Caird landfill at Astbury Quarry near Wrexham was named by the Agency as the second worst operated waste facility in England and Wales because of suspected escaped gas. But Shanks said the gas source was still under dispute. John Shaughnessy, head of external relations explained: “We have disputed that gas is coming from us for quite some time, but the Agency regards it as coming from our site.”
An independent investigation bolstered the company's belief that at least some of the gas came from other industrial sites next to the landfill, Mr Shaughnessy said. “We accept it's a complicated scenario but we feel there's a very strong case backed up by the independent study that the Agency should look elsewhere.”
“Where it's in this much dispute, with a fair amount of evidence throwing up a big question mark, a reasonable approach would be to put a question mark over it, but it's being treated as a fact.”
Aggrieved
Of the decision to make a formal complaint, Mr Shaughnessy said: “We have been down an informal route without success and this formal branding of the site has kicked things into action. We are working on the same side as the Agency, but we felt particularly aggrieved and hard done by because of the almost bureaucratic reasons for our site being classed as a bad performer.”
The Spotlight named a Shanks landfill in Stewartby, Bedfordshire, as the seventh worst waste facility. In this case, Shanks criticised the Agency for taking account of a technical anomaly in working out the operational score. Mr Shaughnessy said the problem was an “outdated” formula in the site licence which the Agency had been made aware of. “In agreement with the Agency it was regarded as a purely administrative blip and we carried on working as we were before with the full knowledge and agreement of the Agency,” he said.
He added: “As the OPA system came in it became apparent that we would suffer under the old license so the motions were set in train to amend the license, but this took far longer than it needed to.”
The Agency responded: “The OPA inspections that are undertaken by the Environment Agency are rigorous and fair, they follow national guidance, and the methodology used is audited regularly.
“The operators of all waste sites have the opportunity to raise with the Environment Agency any site inspection report and score given if they believe that they have been harshly treated. The Environment Agency will not ignore problems and breaches of Waste Management License conditions that are observed during site inspections, and seeks always to be a fair and consistent regulator.”
The Agency found that in 2002, the first full year it had OPA data for licensed facilities, 39% were “fully compliant” with license conditions – and had an OPA score of 0. Another 49% performed well, with scores less than 20.
An OPA score of more than 100 indicated “poorly managed sites”. Shanks's sites at Astbury and Stewartby had scores of 433 and 351, while the worst waste facility, Pillhead Copse landfill in Devon, which was run by a private operator, scored 435.
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