I will outline the reasons this directive has been introduced, give a short outline of its content and some indication of the implications for this country.
For many years the EU was not faintly concerned about extractive industry waste since it was regarded as outside the scope of its legislation. The reason this changed was a number of serious incidents which involved mine waste. The first was at the Los Frailes copper, lead and zinc mine in Spain which resulted in two million tonnes of tailings, which is mine processed waste, and four million cubic metres of contaminated water getting into the local river. The second was the Baia Mare gold mine in Romania, where approximately 120 tonnes of cyanide and heavy metals escaped into a tributary of the Danube. Both were the result of a failure of tailings dams. The potential implications of these incidents were serious because the Los Frailes escape threatened Doñana National Park, which is a site of great natural wildlife importance and the Baia Mare incident caused a major fish kill in the Danube. Neither incident turned out to have long-term significance, especially since Boliden Limited, which owns Los Frailes, carried out a large and expensive clean-up job which cost the company and the local provincial authority in excess of $50 million. It is good to try to avoid such expenditure.
These incidents prompted the Commission and the Parliament to look hard at the EU's position. When the issue was examined, it was found there was no appropriate legislation. Interpretation was carried out on existing legislation, particularly the waste framework directive, but it was found that it only includes very general provisions as to how to deal with waste. It was and is doubtful how far it applies because of some specific exemptions relating to mining.
The land-fill directive was under consideration at the time and some mining and quarrying waste was brought into it. However, it is not intended for this sort of waste and there has been a general acceptance that it was unsuitable. The other relevant legislation is the Seveso directive which deals with major accident planning and response, which specifically excluded mining from its ambit. All in all, there was a recognition of a very large waste stream with limited EU control on it. While some countries have good systems for regulating this, including Ireland, not all of them do. The Commission's response to this was to produce this new directive as one of a package of measures. The others were to amend the SEVESO directive to bring some mining operations into it and arrange for the IPPC bureau to produce a best available technology note, which will set out the state-of-the-art system for the management of mine tailings and waste rocks. The SEVESO directive is now agreed on these two points. The BAT note is very nearly finished and will complement the proposed new directive by guiding authorities and operators as to the best way to manage the most sensitive mining wastes.
The directive is concerned with setting minimum requirements to prevent extractive industry waste from causing problems for people or the environment. It is especially concerned with preventing soil and water pollution and ensuring the stability of any structures for waste disposal facilities to prevent major accidents as far as possible, and, when there are any, to have procedures to clean up afterwards. The general structure is not prescriptive in the methods of waste management to be used. This is because there is a wide range of extractive industry wastes and circumstances in which one can find mines and quarries so it was accepted that one could not set detailed physical rules.
Moreover it sets out the procedures that must be applied to examine the wastes and to ensure that operations producing them will meet the objectives of the directive. For example, there is a requirement in the directive that regulatory authorities ensure that operators employ competent people to manage all their waste and it defines who is competent. We strongly support this approach because it will lead to proper cost effective solutions for a very diverse industry. It covers a wide range of materials apart from what are normally thought of as minerals to include sands and gravels but only on shore. Offshore waste is far too different to try to encompass in the same instrument. Some processing away from mines is included and the main example of this is the Aughinish alumina refinery on the Shannon. It covers everything during a mine or quarry operation and the closed sites but exploration for minerals has been excluded.
Waste, as defined in the waste directive, is quite extraordinarily complex and at present unsatisfactory because of a recent European Court judgment on which we have given the committee a separate note. If I start talking about that we will be here for another two days. Broadly speaking it depends on the general level of hazard and at the lowest level all operators will have to produce waste management plans under which they must characterise their waste so that the permitting authorities will be able to see that what they produce is as they state and not something different. All member states will have to ensure that all operations comply with standards for the construction of new facilities and to prevent soil and water pollution. The next level up covers just about everything else and those operators must be specifically permitted and produce guarantees that when they close the money will be available to ensure sites are properly rehabilitated and do not cause long-term environmental problems.
For those where an accident occurs there will be serious consequences for the environment or potential loss of life there must be a major accident plan to deal with this eventuality. This process requires considerable public participation. The directive does not say very much about closed sites. It is mainly a study of how to try to deal with them and there is no requirement for member states to take any specific action on it.
There are four major sites here producing large quantities of waste, the zinc mines at Navan, Galmoy and Lisheen, and the Aughinish alumina refinery on the Shannon producing between them about four million tonnes of waste a year. In the mines half of this is used as backfill, to go back underground to support the roof of the workings and prevent collapses and surface subsidence. All of these fall into the highest category of control all the way up to needing major accident plans. The EPA already regulates them to that level so the effects for them should be quite small because they should not have to do anything extra. This would be true of many parts of Europe but not everywhere, particularly the accession countries in eastern Europe some of which have large mining industries and the legacy of the communist system which in those days was not very interested in environmental control. About 500 quarries will be affected. Most of these use small amounts of inert waste so they will need to produce only waste management plans and demonstrate compliance with general standards.
The Commission estimates the general cost at about 1% of turnover which is not significant although the costs will be higher for some operations, particularly those which wash their produce to clean it and separate out fine grain materials. There will have to be additional administration nonetheless probably at local authority level since the management plans are going to have be examined to ensure they are acceptable and there will have to be more monitoring. The existing operations will have four years to comply.
This comes under the co-decision making process whereby the Parliament, the Commission and the Council of Ministers must all come to an agreement. The first meeting of the environmental council meeting working party took place in November and the first reading in Parliament will be in January. It has been agreed with the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government that this directive will form one of the priorities for the environment council and the aim is to reach a political agreement at the June council meeting.
In general terms we are very supportive of this proposal which is an appropriate response to the problems shown by the incidents at Los Frailes and Baia Mare and it has resulted from extensive stakeholder discussion with the Commission which has gone a long way to try to balance the needs of the industry, of member states and the NGOs. Changes to the text will be required because of the problems with definition of waste. We hope to meet our objective on this which is to keep a balance between environmental protection and the need to maintain competitiveness of an industry that is essential to continued development here.
