Industry
Two companies in the area around the Afon Clun valley are regulated by a system known as Integrated Pollution Control (IPC). They are Nipa Laboratories, at Llantwit Fardre, who operate processes involving the manufacture and use of organic chemicals, and Maxibrite, who produce smokeless fuels at Mwyndy, using carbonisation processes. IPC attempts to minimise the impact of industrial processes on the environment. Coal Products, who produced foundry coke at the Cwm Coke Works at Tynant, Beddau, were also regulated by IPC until the works closed in 2002. Under IPC the Environment Agency ensure that: "in carrying out a prescribed process the operator shall use BATNEEC (Best Available Techniques Not Entailing Excessive Cost) for:
i) preventing the release of substances prescribed for any environmental medium or, where that is not practicable by such means, for reducing the release of such substances to a minimum and for rendering harmless any such substances which are so released; and
ii) for rendering harmless any other substances which might cause harm if released into any environmental medium."
Since the end of coal mining in south Wales, the Afon Clun gradually returned to the condition in which it was before the Industrial Revolution, although it has been polluted several times since then. In 2000 CE ammonia discharged into Mwyndy Brook killed over 600 fish and eels, including the complete resident population of a conservation species known as bullheads, and many hundreds of small coarse fish fry, in the Clun. The coal briquetting plant that caused the pollution were fined a total of GBP31,816 in fines and costs, after a prosecution brought by the Environment Agency. Nant Myddlyn, a tributary on the Clun, suffered from a diesel spill near Llantwit Fardre, in early 2008 CE, which was raised at the Senedd.
Between 1994 and 1996, water quality at Nant Myddlyn, from Tynant to the confluence with the Nant Dowlais, was noted as RE5; at Afon Clun, from the confluence with the Myddlyn to Rhiwsaeson village, the quality was RE4. The deterioration of water quality was caused by the discharge of industrial effluent from Cwm Coke Works at Tynant. An effective effluent treatment plant was recommissioned to solve the discharge problem and water quality soon returned to RE2, until the works' closure in 2002 CE.
Since Coal Products' Cwm Coking Works closed, water abstraction from the Afon Clun area is minimal. The Works at Tynant had used up to 3.9 million litres per day (Ml/d) from Nant Myddlyn and a borehole and occasionally, water abstraction at the Works had caused Nant Myddlyn to dry up.
Famous quotes containing the word industry:
“I have never yet spoken from a public platform about women in industry that someone has not said, “But things are far better than they used to be.” I confess to impatience with persons who are satisfied with a dangerously slow tempo of progress for half of society in an age which requires a much faster tempo than in the days that “used to be.” Let us use what might be instead of what has been as our yardstick!”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something; my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)