Emlyn Jones takes his job as Environment Protection Officer with the South East Wales area very seriously indeed. Originally from Nefyn in North Wales, he moved down to Cardiff in 1993 and has been working with the Agency for 4 years.
Emlyn’s responsibility as a Level 1 Environment Protection Officer (EPO) is the management and regulation of the water environment and controlling waste in his area which covers east Cardiff, the Cynon valley, and the Taff valley from Pontypridd to Merthyr Tydfil. No mean feat when you consider there are 11 licensed waste management sites in East Cardiff alone along with a considerable number of exempt sites and effluent discharges which need to be inspected on a regular basis. He works closely with two other Environment Protection Officers and an Environment Protection Assistant within the eleven strong Taff Environment Protection Team. 
Inspections can last for anything up to three hours, and on a cold November morning the regular Landfill site inspection is done initially in the team Landrover, before a closer inspection on foot is carried out.
“Building a professional relationship with the people you deal with on a day to day basis is the key to this job. Being able to relate to all different types of people from your one-man skip operator to your Chief Executive of the local authority is what it is all about”.
“Today I have asked the manager of a landfill site to repair the fencing around the perimeter of the site to ensure site security. Since the last time I was here, the site manager has authorised construction of two leachate lagoons and fenced them off. Without these lagoons, leachate would be running across the site and possibly out of the boundaries, which could potentially endanger local watercourses.
The Agency actively promotes pollution prevention within all areas of business and industry. It is a reflection of successful regulation that large landfill sites such as this do not cause any significant problems. “Each time I inspect this site, I issue a checklist of things needing to be done or progressed and timescales in which they must be completed. If they are not completed by the allocated time then action is taken against the site operators.
“This is a good landfill site which does not cause a nuisance to the local community. Through negotiation and discussion, constant improvements are made. As long as it is run and regulated well and as long as it continues to operate in this way, there shouldn’t be any problems”.
Protecting the environment is not all about unannounced visits. The unconvinced need to be convinced that consistently breaking the law is not only unacceptable to the community, but will not be tolerated by the Agency. The role of EPO here turns to prosecutor. Business, industrial and waste management site operators are not always aware that they have a legal obligation to the Environment Agency to ensure that their processes do not pollute or endanger the environment.
A prosecution by the Agency cannot be instigated without first completing a comprehensive report for each incident attended and investigated. Each EPO is responsible for the sites within their area within a catchment and as such are charged with bringing the perpetrators to justice for each offence. Being responsible for an area of Cardiff, and the areas of Cynon Valley and Merthyr Tydfil, a lot of time is spent collecting evidence and compiling reports for future prosecutions.
A day out of the office would see any EPO visiting fly tipping hot spots. “Fly tipping is a real issue within every community in South Wales”, says Emlyn. “On my way to and from site visits I will always visit places which are notoriously bad for fly – tipping. Here I will gather as much evidence as possible and gradually build up a file”. Just because the illegal tipper does not hear anything from the Agency within a few weeks of fly-tipping the waste does not mean the Agency does not know who is responsible.
“We will gather evidence over a period of weeks, if not months, and through surveillance and careful monitoring will gather enough information to ensure that the perpetrators are caught and brought to justice. If the only way to stop this occurring means putting a persistent offender out of business, then unfortunately, this is the only option left open to us”.
Following reports of a pollution incident it is a case of all hands on deck. An EPO is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to deal with emergencies which may arise from unexpected leaks and spills. Over the last year the Taff team has had to deal with no less than 3 major pollution incidents affecting Cardiff water courses, two of which have been in the Roath Park area; an area of the city very popular with the public.
“Times like this create pressure points within the team as everything has to be dropped to allow us to put all our resources into minimising the impact of the pollution. This can take several days, and involve overnight work. Thankfully, we have been able to trace the perpetrators responsible for all the pollution incidents in Cardiff this last year, so our efforts have been worthwhile. The next step is to try and re-coup some of the clean- up costs which can be considerable”.
News Contact :Lowri Roberts (01222) 770088
