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FOE TO ENVIRONMENT AGENCY: GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!

12 Sep 2001

ENVIRONMENT AGENCY - NEW TOUGH WATCHDOG OR SAME OLD INDUSTRY LAPDOG?

At The Environment Agency AGM today (11am, Shaw Theatre, Euston NW1), Friends of the Earth will seek to ask the country's largest quango why it is failing to deliver on its policy of prosecuting pollution offenders.

A leaked Agency internal report, reported by the respected environmental journal The Ends Report, revealed that prosecutions were undertaken in fewer than a quarter of the worst environmental incidents. The Environmental Agency developed a new prosecution policy after the appointment of Sir John Harman as Chief Executive, who replaced the widely criticised Lord de Ramsey. Environment Minister Michael Meacher endorsed the new policy.

The Agency has repeatedly been attacked over its record this year, for example;

• for failing to adequately regulate Edmonton incinerator,
• for failing to respond effectively to the disposal of toxic incinerator fly-ash from an incinerator in Byker, Newcastle,
• and for supporting the use of pyres and mass burial sites for animals culled as a result of foot and mouth, despite it's own hierarchy suggesting that these were the worst options.

At the AGM, Friends of the Earth will also be asking the Agency about it progress in working with disadvantaged communities, such as those suffering from the bulk of industrial pollution.

Mary Taylor, Industry and Pollution Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said:

"The appointments of Sir John Harman and Barbara Young to the Agency were supposed to make it a more effective regulator, more in touch with people's concerns. But this year has been a disaster for the Agency. It's shocking that it can't even implement its own prosecution policy. The Agency needs to get its act together soon, or risk losing the support of organisations such as Friends of the Earth."

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