Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
River pollution fines are not reflecting the damage done
IT feels that hardly a week goes by without reading about a farmer being fined for polluting our waterways.
Why does this keep happening? Why are the fines are so small and, even in cases when pollution is confirmed, why do so few actually face the courts?
A quick trawl through my email inbox shows farmers, companies and NI Water are being continually fined paltry sums for the problems their pollution causes wildlife.
The reasons range from silage run off to slurry spills and overflowing effluent tanks but even when incidents cause massive fish kills the penalty result is rarely the most severe available.
We know from Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs publications that NI is abysmally failing to meet water quality standards.
Following a freedom of information request to DAERA, I can tell you the largest share of confirmed water pollution incidents reported to Northern Ireland Environment Agency come from farms – and it’s been the same since 2017.
Of the 872 confirmed pollution incidents across NI, 253 were from farms yet just nine farmers were convicted.
In 2020, there were 947 confirmed reports, 296 from farms. Six farmers were convicted.
In 2019 we had 943 confirmed pollution incidents, 343 from farms – again six farmers were convicted.
In 2018, 284 of the confirmed pollution incidents were on farms and eight resulted in farmers being convicted.
And in 2017, 304 of the 1029 confirmed pollution incidents were on farms, leading to 13 convictions.
Don’t get me wrong here, industry and Northern Ireland Water were also responsible for a large number of incidents and the conviction figures are just as dire.
But what’s being done to stop it? Going by the figures, which are not going the way we should hope, very little. A quick trawl through DAERA’S
website would have you believe this issue is being taken seriously.
They outline how polluters can face fines of up to £20,000 or three months in jail, or both. Yet rarely in all the emails I’ve had from them about water pollution incidents in recent years do penalties meet that level.
In certain cases when someone pleads guilty, by operation of law they are entitled to credit for pleading guilty, which may explain why maximum fines are not always imposed.
However, what message does that give the farmers, companies and water agencies?
It tells them it’s probably cheaper to pollute away and pay the paltry court fines than it is to pay out to stop it happening in the first place.
This is a fixable problem and ridiculous campaigns like painting a yellow fish near waterways is not going to cut it. Fish are floundering, we know biodiversity is in crisis.
Yet this is the best our former minister for agriculture and the environment can come up with when a lot of farms clearly need bigger or better slurry tanks and improved silage systems? It’s a joke.
We need to start at the very beginning and that’s with the apparently broken system overseeing this mess.
The wishy washy Nutrient Action Programme Regulations (NI) 2019 for farms don’t appear to be delivering.
According to the legislation “the capacity of storage facilities for livestock manure and silage effluent of a holding shall be sufficient and adequate to provide for the storage of all the livestock manure and silage effluent which is likely to require storage on the holding for such period as may be necessary to ensure compliance with these Regulations and the avoidance of water pollution”.
I don’t know about you but I see some loopholes in that sentence. Couldn’t a farmer just say I didn’t think it would be “likely” I’d need bigger or more slurry tanks, even when they did?
The rules also state the “total livestock manure storage capacity on holdings shall be sufficient for at least 22 weeks’ storage” but if it’s for pigs or chickens, it should be “26 weeks”.
Farmers are not allowed to spread slurry for around 16 weeks of the year because the rain will wash it straight into waterways, causing more ammonia and nitrate pollution.
I know some feel immune to that rule and can be seen spraying their stench across the countryside even when they shouldn’t be.
But I also know of dairy farms where cows never leave the shed and can be housed for 52 weeks of the year.
That’s a hell of a lot of slurry to keep in tanks until you are allowed to spread it.
When so many farms are causing pollution incidents, I might be inclined to increase that 22 or 26 week period a fair bit to ensure everyone has enough room for the slurry their animals are producing.
We and our wildlife deserve clean water, just as we deserve clean air. But the powers that be are clearly not delivering on either.
It’s high time we had an independent environment agency to make them.