EPA - Ireland's Environment, An Integrated Assessment - 2020

Chapter 10: Environment and Industry 2. Emissions from Licensed Facilities Emissions to Water from Industrial Facilities Industrial pollutant releases to water can have an impact on surface water quality. Industrial wastewater discharges can be directly to water or indirectly to water via sewers, with Irish Water’s consent, for treatment in an EPA-licensed municipal wastewater treatment plant. Industrial pollutant releases to water include compounds that contain nutrients such as nitrogen (referred to as total nitrogen) and phosphorus (total phosphorus), which can cause eutrophication. Releases are also described in terms of their total organic carbon (TOC) content. High levels of organic content in a natural water body will undermine an ecosystem’s operation, for example by affecting oxygen levels in the water. Other relevant pollutants are heavy metals such as arsenic, copper, nickel and zinc, which can also have detrimental impacts on human and environmental health. Emerging and trace pollutants such as persistent pharmaceutical products, microplastics, trace organics and residues present a potentially serious threat from industry to human health and ecosystems, and are not commonly monitored in the environment. Industrial pollutant releases to water can have an impact on surface water quality although the impact is determined by the characteristics of the water body and, thus, how susceptible it is to the effects of pollution. In Ireland, the overall emissions from industry to waters are relatively small in comparison with those from urban wastewater treatment plants. Total direct industrial emissions to water of total nitrogen, total phosphorus, total organic carbon and heavy metals represent less than 3 per cent of the total emissions from urban wastewater treatment plants in Ireland. Figure 10.5 describes the releases to water from industry (directly to water and indirectly via the sewer/urban wastewater treatment plants) and, for comparison purposes, directly from urban wastewater treatment plants in the period 2007-2017. Direct releases from industry have been proportionately small in this period except for the emissions of metals. There has been a significant decrease in emissions of metals to water from industry in the past 5 years, which mirrored the implementation period for the environmental objective licence reviews undertaken by the EPA (Figure 10.6). The largest improvements were from the mining sector. The cessation of operations at one installation resulted in large environmental improvements, although other sites met the reduced metal limits in their licences through a combination of improved water management practices including reducing flows, segregation of uncontaminated waters and introducing abatement measures. However, in recent work carried out to identify significant pressures on water bodies, the EPA has identified 34 EPA-licensed facilities (30 industrial and 4 waste) as exerting a significant pressure on waters, with five of these facilities (all food and drink) assessed to be the primary causes of pressure on nearby watercourses (Source EPA Water Programme). In addition, there are 27 EPA-licensed facilities on the provisional list of waste and industrial sites that cause/exert significant groundwater pressures. Nine of these sites are from the waste sector, eight are from the chemical sector and four are surface-coating facilities. As outlined in Topic Box 10.1 above, under the IED regime, a host of new BAT conclusions have been or will be published, with each coming into effect within a 4-year window. This effectively means that mandatory emission limits for industrial activities, including power plants and chemical and food and drink sites, will be lowered further overall between now and 2030. Indirect water emissions from industry (to sewers and urban wastewater treatment plants) are those that undergo further treatment in a downstream wastewater treatment plant prior to discharge to receiving waters. These indirect emissions are predominantly from the food and drink sector (50%) and the chemical sector (31%). In terms of organic content (TOC), indirect emissions have almost doubled in the past 5 years (Figure 10.7) and this is largely due to the expansion of the food and drink sectors. These emissions are putting pressure on the wastewater treatment infrastructure, which was noted in a recent European report as being uniquely already over capacity (EEA, 2019a). The recent EPA publication describes in greater detail the urgency of the need to upgrade our wastewater infrastructure (EPA, 2019). Even state-of-the-art municipal wastewater treatment facilities may have difficulty removing persistent and trace organics, and it is preferable that these wastewaters are treated at the source of generation prior to discharge to sewers. There were a small number of unauthorised industrial releases (chlorinated substances) to sewers in 2007-2010 due to failed bunding and leakage issues, which accounted for almost 90 per cent of the indirect industrial emissions over that whole period. (Figure 10.5) In summary, industrial emissions to water represent a small proportion of overall emissions to water that are routinely monitored. However, current policies do not address the full scope of the industrial pollution load to the environment, and greater focus needs to be placed on the fate of emerging and trace pollutants discharging from industry (Figure 10.4). 263