CIWEM has written to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Caroline Spelman, expressing concern over air quality management.
This year the UK will have to announce widespread breaches of the European Nitrogen Dioxide Limit Values. European Limit Values are legally binding and exceedences can result in the European Commission taking legal action against the Government.
These European standards have been set to protect human health. The date for compliance was 1 January 2010, with a year given to measure compliance. The 2008 EU Directive allows an extension from 2010 to 2015 provided an action plan is approved by the European Commission. However, CIWEM is unaware of a plan to show that the limit values can be achieved by 2015.
Considerable progress has been made to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides from motor vehicles, but the increasing proportion of nitrogen dioxide in vehicle exhaust means the UK is likely to fail to comply with the European limit values. The main causes of the exceedences are emissions from heavy goods vehicles and buses, and high background concentrations. It is clear that new measures at both national and local levels will be required. A new approach, one that may require giving local authorities additional powers to introduce low-emission strategies to ensure that the EU limit values are achieved by 2015 is needed. This will be necessary to ensure that the EU grants the Government an extension.
However, CIWEM is concerned that action is being taken too late, with Defra possibly concluding that it will be cheaper not to achieve compliance and instead pay any fines imposed by the European Commission.
CIWEM Executive Director, Nick Reeves OBE, says: “A breach of EU requirements on air quality makes no sense at all. Aside from the unnecessary burden of costly fines through non-compliance, it shows a marked lack of concern for the quality of life of people and raises questions over the Prime Minister's commitment to ‘the greenest government ever’.”
Source: The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM)
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