EPA 1990, Part II
With implementation of the Waste Management Licensing Regulations 1994 in May 1994 Part I of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 was finally replaced by Part II of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (EPA). The EPA seeks to build on a system put in place by COPA with stricter licensing controls and other provisions aimed at ensuring waste handling, disposal and recovery operations do not harm the environment. Responsibility for waste rests with the person who produces it together with everyone who handles it, right through to final disposal or reclamation. Only “fit and proper” persons may run waste sites and responsibility for a closed landfill site will continue until all risks of pollution or harm to human health and safety are past.
The licensing regime enables waste regulation authorities (WRAs) to refuse to accept the surrender of a license. Prior to enablement of the 1990 Act in May 1996, operators could hand back their licenses without restriction, leaving the public purse to cover any restoration and clean-up liabilities. Concern about the scale of those liabilities prompted operators to return licenses for nearly 25% of the waste disposal sites in England and Wales shortly before the new regime came into force. Now under section 39 of the 1990 Act, a WRA can not accept the surrender of a license unless it is satisfied that the condition of the land arising from its use for treating, keeping or disposing of waste is “unlikely” to cause environmental damage or harm human health.
The EC Landfill Directive (from Limiting Landfill: A Consultation paper on limiting landfill to meet the EC Landfill Directive's targets for the landfill of biodegradable municipal waste) Council Directive 1999/31/EC on the landfill of waste (better known as the Landfill Directive) was agreed in Europe at Council on 26 April 1999 and came into force in the EU on 16 July 2001. It was transposed into United Kingdom law in 2002. The full text of the Directive was published in the Official Journal of the European Communities L182/1 on 16 July 1999 and is available on the Europa Website – a site dedicated to European law.
The Directive aims to harmonise controls on the landfill of waste throughout the European Union, and its main focus is on common standards for the design, operation, and aftercare of landfill sites. It also aims to reduce the amount of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, emitted from landfill sites. The United Kingdom has a wider legally binding target, agreed at Kyoto in December 1997, to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 12.5% below 1990 levels by 2008–2012.
With this latter aim in mind, the Directive sets three progressive targets for Member States to reduce the amount of their municipal biodegradable waste sent to landfill. Biodegradable waste was focused upon because it is the biodegradable element of waste which breaks down to produce methane. The targets are set for an important waste stream - biodegradable municipal waste. The Directive requires that the strategy for achieving the targets must also address the need to reduce all biodegradable waste going to landfill.
Read more about this topic: Landfills In The United Kingdom
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