Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-101)
14 OCTOBER 2004
MR MIKE
WALKER AND
MR PER-ANDERS
HJORT
Q100 Mr Thomas: What in your experience
is happening to that waste? Is it tipped, dumped, illegally, or
is it being taken and put in landfill or disposal sites and are
the owners and operators of those sites also being rather loose,
shall we say, with the regulations?
Mr Hjort: I do not know, to be
honest. A lot of sorting is going on in different places under
conditions which a company like ours would not allow people to
work. There are probably many operations like that going on. The
working conditions in some places are conditions we would not
work under. I cannot say where illegal dumping is taking place,
because frankly I have not seen any illegal dumping with my own
eyes.
Sue Doughty: It has been suggested
to me that it is being mixed in with non-hazardous waste and getting
into landfill. Do you have any comment to make about that?
Mr Walker: The National Hazardous
Waste Forum discussed this earlier in the week and around the
table nobody really knew where it was going. The Agency said that
it was going to be looking at hazardous waste landfill sites in
the next few months to try to get a better handle on what has
happened to hazardous waste since July.
Q101 Sue Doughty: In this context, there
was a query about whether in fact there had been an increase in
disposal of hazardous waste before co-disposal ended which would
mean that people had been front-loading their activities. Is that
still a possibility or are we still saying that there is a considerable
gap in the amount of hazardous waste we would have expected to
be disposed of now which cannot be explained away by any other
means?
Mr Walker: Before July, there
was certainly increased hazardous waste landfilled, contaminated
soil particularly, which is the largest component of hazardous
waste by weight and volume. It was obvious that construction sites
were being cleared in advance of the regulations and the waste
was being co-disposed. That will account for some of the drop
in hazardous waste produced since then. Nevertheless, there is
concern that there is other hazardous waste which is falling out
of the regulatory system in one way or another.
Chairman: Thank you very much; that has
been extremely interesting. Thank you Mr Walker and thank you
Mr Hjort, we appreciate that you are an extremely busy man and
we are grateful to you for your time. This is a little underhand,
but since the representatives of the Environment Agency are still
in the room and as we have another five minutes, it would be extremely
helpful if you would not mind coming back and talking about this
issue of hazardous waste and the missing waste which has just
been raised by ESA.
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