Dirt on the Environment Agency

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The new community pollution magazine Dirt pulls no punches when it addresses the shortcomings of the Government's pollution watchdog, the Environment Agency. The editorial in the first issue states bluntly that the Environment Agency protects polluting industries and processes more than the people who suffer as a result of the pollution. The front cover features Environment Agency chief executive Baroness Young trying to persuade the public that house bricks containing dioxins are "absolutely safe" when Agency reports themselves suggest otherwise.

The magazine is being published to report on the campaigns by community organisations to resist the actions of polluters in their localities. The first issue is heavily weighted towards stories of landfill, incinerator and cement kiln campaigns. Future issues will offer a balance of technical, environmental legal and medical information with the emphasis on grassroots campaigns.

A well as the stories, the magazine contains a number of letters from toxics campaigners from around the country on the weakness of the Environment Agency. There are even a couple of letters from Environment Agency employees on the intolerable working conditions they suffer.

The magazine pinpoints the pollution record of the cement industry. Where previously, coal and coke were the fuels used to produce the high temperatures required in the manufacture of cement, there has now been a shift towards burning hazardous waste. There are plans to increase the burning of liquid toxic waste and solid materials, mostly tyres. There were already problems with cement kilns with the production of cement dust but there will now be an increase in toxic emissions as well.

Dirt particularly takes the Environment Agency to task over its poor record on prosecutions. It points out that the level of fines declined in 2001 over 2000, going down from £8532 to £6410 on average. The total amount of fines levied was £3.1 million in 2000 and £2.7 million in 2001, hardly enough to cause much concern to the polluters.

Dirt promises to be a valuable new tool for pollution campaigners, providing the stories and background information needed to mount successful campaigns. The notoriously feeble Environmental Agency will have to watch its step from now on, with a magazine ready to report on its failure to police polluters properly. Dirt will render a service to us all in carrying out this role.

Dirt is published by the Centre for Environmental Protection (CEP), Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University. Editor: Alan Dalton, 3 Montpelier Grove, London NW5 2XD; tel 020 7485 2981; e-mail eve@ajpdhazeco.demon.co.uk. £4 per single issue, bulk (10 or more) orders to community groups at £1 per copy; individual subscriptions, four issues for £16 (inc. p&p), institutions and companies, four issues for £100

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