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The Ministry of Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy has ordered the temporary closure of two active non-hazardous waste vessels from the Nerva landfill when verifying that “the amount of waste deposited both in them and in the one that was already closed in 2022 exceeds the maximum allowed capacity by more than 2.86 million tons.” In addition, he also fines the company that manages the facilities with 1,686,824 euros for “hiding information.”
As he has advanced The country This Friday, Diseño de Soluciones Medioambientales (DSM), the company that manages the Nerve facilities, presented a project in 2019 for the modification of the integrated environmental authorization, which “occupied the entirety of that glass”, but the Board, in July of 2021, “asked him to correct it.”
Thus, the company transferred the alternative proposal in October 2021 in which it “contemplated the use of vessels II and III”. However, the Department of Waste and Soil Quality of the Ministry of Sustainability required in May of last year “a study to rule out that the authorized capacity had been exceeded and to verify if, in reality, what was intended was an expansion of the landfill.
As the newspaper explains, the Board did not find the information provided by the company “sufficient”, so it carried out its own inspection in September 2022 with a specialized company. This analysis concluded that “the total sum of the waste contained in vessels I, II and III was 10,253,665 tons, 2,869,554 more than the 7,384,111 tons established in the integrated environmental authorization”, which contemplates the total sum of the fords and the final screed, that is, “an excess of 39% with respect to the planned capacity”.
Therefore, Vessel I, which was already closed, had “a mass of 1,643,516 tons, when its maximum expected capacity was 771,810”; on the other hand, vessels II and III, according to the analysis of the Board, had a mass of “8.6 million tons, when its limit agreed by the integrated environmental authorization is “3.87 million tons.”
For all these reasons, according to the information published, the Board has considered that “the differences between what is permitted and what is actually stored are considerable” and that “they cannot be attributed to the method used by the operator to determine the mass that is deposited because the entity professionally dedicated to waste management is assumed to have sufficient capacity and technical knowledge to carry out this control”. Therefore, the administration points out that the company “allegedly falsified the data required by the applicable regulations” with the “will to confuse or deceive about the mass deposited and about the state of the installation in relation to what is authorized.”
Therefore, the council accuses the company Diseño de Soluciones Medioambientales (DSM), which manages the dump, of “intentionally falsifying the data required by the applicable regulations”, which, in the opinion of the Board, “generates a risk to the health and integrity of the landfill workers due to the possible lack of security due to the” insufficient guarantees of stability of the containment dike”. Therefore, it has agreed to fine the company, with 1,686,824 euros.
The Board proceeded to close vessel I last year, with this decision, against which appeal is possible, the landfill would only have vessels IV and V.
