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:
“Do not put off your work until tomorrow and the day after. For the sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor the one who puts off his work; industry aids work, but the man who puts off work always wrestles with disaster.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)