What lessons have been learnt from the recent Natural Resources Wales report into pollution incident in the river Llynfi and what assurances will the Minister provide to ensure future incidents will be thoroughly investigated and prosecutions made?
As part of normal business procedures, and in line with good practice, NRW completed a post-incident review to capture relevant learning. This has identified scope to increase the number of NRW staff involved in out-of-hours incident response to further improve resilience, evidential sampling procedures and training, enhance arrangements for managing incidents which may exhaust NRW’s routine duty officer capacity and strengthen NRW’s pan-Wales response capability.
Some of the actions arising from the review of this incident have been implemented, but other changes are part of ongoing change programmes.
Now the investigation into this incident has concluded, NRW will undertake a case review, in addition to a more holistic review of incident management and the inherent link to regulatory activities. This may consider things such as improving capability for fieldwork during the hours of darkness and, in remote areas of Wales, enhancing the sharing of intelligence and knowledge on local issues, improving means of capturing time-critical evidence and exploring how increased public awareness and concern on water quality can help deter and report pollution.
While NRW looks to continuously improve its services, including incident management, it cannot guarantee that serious incidents of this nature won’t happen in future. NRW attends the majority of pollution incidents and has an excellent track record of identifying sources of pollution. However, it is not always possible to identify the offender even when relevant samples are collected immediately following the incident.
We all have a responsibility to prevent serious pollution incidents by ensuring our own activities managed in way that prevents pollution and preferably, helps to enhance the environment. For those who hold environmental permits, this means understanding and complying with all permit requirements. More general advice and guidance on pollution prevention can be found at the Net Regs website (www.netregs.org.uk).
For property owners, pollution can be prevented by understanding how properties connect to drainage, being careful in the use of materials such as cleaning chemicals, and materials flushed down toilets and drains. Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water’s ‘Stop The Block’ webpage provides helpful information on this.
Finally, misconnected drains can pollute local streams, rivers and beaches, damage wildlife and put our health at risk. Advice on how to check that properties are connected appropriately can be obtained from the Connect Right website (www.connectright.org.uk).