Plevin hit with EA enforcement notice after fire

The Environment Agency has issued an enforcement notice to stop R Plevin & Sons receiving waste wood at its 5 million Hazlehead wood recovery plant, which has been hit by two fires during commissioning over the last few weeks.

The latest fire, which broke out on June 2, affected around 3,000 tonnes of wood chip at the South Yorkshire facility, but Plevin confirmed yesterday (June 12) that this has now been extinguished.

The Agency discovered 20 dead brown trout and high levels of ammonia pollution in a nearby dyke, which had been affected by fire water run-off from the 50-acre Hazlehead site.

As a result, the enforcement notice also requires Plevin to prevent future run-off from entering nearby watercourses.

Agency officers took water quality samples from Sledbrook Dyke and the River Don to assess the impact of the pollution, and although ammonia levels in the River Don have now reduced, officers are continuing to monitor the situation closely.

The Agency is now working with South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue to investigate the cause of the blaze and determine whether there have been any breaches of environmental permitting rules or specific conditions of Plevins license.

Should any offences be found, the Agency said it would consider the most appropriate course of action in line with our published procedures.

The incident followed another wood chip fire at the 150,000 tonnes per year capacity wood processing site on April 26, which was described as a small amount of smouldering (see letsrecycle.com story).

Plevin

Situated at Crow Edge in Hazlehead, the facility has been developed to supply recycled wood chip fuel for energy producer E.ONs 120 million, 30 MW biomass energy plant at Blackburn Meadows near Sheffield (see letsrecycle.com story).

The plant described as UKs largest waste wood recovery centre is undergoing commissioning and was on course to become fully operational in the coming weeks, but a spokeswoman for Plevin claimed the blaze and Agency notice would not affect the plants planned opening.

She said: We can confirm that the fire which started at our Hazlehead, Sheffield site on Monday 2 June is now out.

We will continue to work with both the Environment Agency and South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue to minimise the risk of such an incident happening again and will be conducting a full investigation into how and why this fire started.

The spokeswoman added: We would like to thank the Environment Agency and South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service for their continued support during the incident and to sincerely apologise to residents for all inconvenience.

Plevin is a major UK wood processing and recycling company collecting, processing and distributing around 600,000 tonnes of wood a year from several sites across the UK.