One Tipperary Site Identified By EPA For Enforcement In Q3 2024.

In total seven sites have been identified as National Priorities for enforcement by the EPA in Q3 2024.

• Seven Sites were identified as National Priority Sites in Q3 2024; three were from the Food & Drink Sector, two from the Intensive Agriculture Sector, one from the Waste Sector and one from the Anaerobic Digestion Sector.
• The most common issues identified at these sites were non-compliant discharges to water and facility management.
• A site’s presence on the National Priority Sites List indicates a poor level of licence compliance.

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its National Priority Sites list for quarter three, 2024. The National Priority Sites (NPS) System is a system of performance-based indicators to rank industrial and waste licensed sites in order of priority for enforcement. This allows the EPA to target its enforcement effort at the licensed operators with the poorest environmental performance.

Commenting on the publication, Dr. Tom Ryan, Director, EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement said: “Our enforcement activities are risk based and we prioritise sites that are not complying with their licence. As noted in the EPA’s recent State of the Environment Report, a disproportionate number of sites on the National Priority Sites list have been from the dairy processing and waste sectors. This trend continued in Quarter 3 2024. The seven sites on the current list will be the subject of targeted enforcement action to ensure that the environmental issues are addressed, and compliance is restored.”

Ms Pamela McDonnell, Programme Manager of the EPA’s Industrial Licence Enforcement Programme said: “Three of the sites on the National Priority Sites List, North Cork Co-Op Creameries Limited, Tipperary Co-operative Creamery Limited, and Aurivo Consumer Foods Limited, are milk processing sites. Each of these has featured on the National Priority Sites List previously. Milk and milk effluent pose a significant risk to local streams and rivers if it is not carefully managed. The dairy sector must prioritise investment in environmental controls to prevent the discharge of polluting material. This remains a priority issue for the EPA”.

Other sites on the National Priority Sites list also pose a risk to water quality.
The waste sites on the list include a non-hazardous waste transfer station and an anaerobic digestion facility. Both sites failed to provide sufficient infrastructure to protect groundwater and surface water.

Similarly, at the two intensive agriculture sites on the list, poor management of waste and storm water increased the risk of contaminated discharges.

The list of National Priority Sites for Q3 2024 is in Table 1 below: