Environmental Protection Act 1990
The Environmental Protection Act 1990 is a UK legislation that aims to protect the environment and human health by regulating the management and disposal of waste, controlling pollution, and addressing contaminated land. It provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control, including provisions for licensing and enforcement. The Act also outlines responsibilities for businesses and individuals in preventing environmental harm.
7 Key excerpts on "Environmental Protection Act 1990"
eBook - ePubAdvanced Electrical Installation Work
City and Guilds Edition
- Trevor Linsley(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...These offences are nearly always ‘crimes’ and punished by fines or imprisonment rather than by compensating any individual. The legislation dealing with the environment has evolved for each part – air, water, land noise, radioactive substances. Where organizations’ activities impact upon the environmental laws they are increasingly adopting environmental management systems which comply with ISO 14001. Let us now look at some of the regulations and try to see the present picture at the beginning of the new millennium. Environmental Protection Act 1990 In the context of environmental law, the Environmental Protection Act 1990 was a major piece of legislation. The main sections of the Act are: The Royal Commission of 1976 identified that a reduction of pollutant to one medium, air, water or land, then led to an increase of pollutant in another. It therefore stressed the need to take an integrated approach to pollution control. The processes subject to an integrated pollution control are: • Air emissions. • Processes which give rise to significant quantities of special waste; that is, waste defined in law in terms of its toxicity or flammability. • Processes giving rise to emissions to sewers or ‘Red List’ substances. These are 23 substances including mercury, cadmium and many pesticides which are subject to discharge consent to the satisfaction of the Environment Agency. The Inspectorate is empowered to set conditions to ensure that the best practicable environmental option (BPEO) is employed to control pollution. This is the cornerstone of the Environmental Protection Act. Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations 2000 The system of Pollution Prevention and Control replaced that of Integrated Pollution Control established by the Environmental Protection Act 1990, thus bringing environmental law into the new millennium and implementing the European Directive (EC/96/61) on integrated pollution prevention and control...
eBook - ePubElectrical Installation Work: Level 3
EAL Edition
- Trevor Linsley(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...These offences are nearly always ‘crimes’ and punished by fines or imprisonment rather than by compensating any individual. Built environment Everything we do affects other people or other elements, for instance creating new houses creates jobs but this also impacts the environment given the new amount of materials that have to be provided. We therefore define the materials and resources we use to build things that impact on the environment as the ‘built environment’. Figure 1.1 Eco buildings such as this one are becoming more and more common today. However, we also impact on the environment in other ways, which is why we have developed laws and legislation to deal with the environment but devolving responsibility for each part such as: air, water, land noise, radioactive substances. Where organizations’ activities impact upon the environmental laws they are increasingly adopting environmental management systems that comply with ISO 14001. Let us now look at some of the regulations and try to see the present picture at the beginning of the new millennium. Environmental Protection Act 1990 In the context of environmental law, the Environmental Protection Act 1990 was a major piece of legislation. The main sections of the Act are: Table 1.1 The Environmental Protection Act ensures that companies set up an effective environmental management system Part 1 Integrated pollution control by HM Inspectorate of Pollution, and air pollution control by Local Authorities Part 2 Wastes on land Part 3 Statutory nuisances and clean air Part 4 Litter Part 5 Radioactive Substances Act 1960 Part 6 Genetically modified organisms Part 7 Nature conservation Part 8 Miscellaneous, including contaminated land The Royal Commission of 1976 identified that a reduction of pollutant to one medium, air, water or land, then led to an increase of pollutant in another...
eBook - ePub- Susan Wolf, Neil Stanley(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It is often understood to include not only land, air and water, but also the built environment and the condition of the local neighbourhood. The environment can, for others, mean something more specific and refer to the conservation of natural habitats and ecology. In an environmental law context, s 1(2) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (EPA 1990) contains the following definition of the environment which provides a useful guide regarding the issues addressed in this text: The ‘environment’ consists of all, or any of the following media, namely, the air, water and land; and the medium of air includes the air within buildings and the air within other natural or man-made structures above or below ground. 1.4.2 What is environmental law, who is using it and for what purpose or purposes? Environmental law is primarily a mix of primary legislation, 5 secondary legislation, 6 judicial decisions reported in law reports, common law principles developed by the judiciary, European Union (EU) legislation 7 which is transposed into national law, 8 and international law. 9 The study of environmental law is not confined to a study of the law which is written down in legislation (so-called ‘black letter’ law), but it is also concerned with how the law is used to achieve the objectives of the key environmental stakeholders: the regulators, the regulated industry (i.e. businesses which require a permit), central government, local government, industry associations, pressure groups, local amenity societies, NGOs and the public. The government and its agencies issue policy documents to public officials and the public, in the form of official guidance, in a never-ending stream of White Papers, Green Papers, consultation documents, guidance notes and circulars...
eBook - ePubEnvironmental Health and Hazard Risk Assessment
Principles and Calculations
- Louis Theodore, R. Ryan Dupont(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...Under a mandate of national environmental laws, the EPA strives to formulate and implement actions that lead to a compatible balance between human activities and the ability of natural systems to support and nurture life [ 2 ]. The EPA works with the states and local governments to develop and implement comprehensive environmental programs. Federal laws such as the Clean Air Act (CAA); the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA); the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA); and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), etc., all mandate involvement by state and local government in the details of implementation. This chapter provides an overview of key environmental protection laws and subsequent regulations that affect the environment in the United States, particularly from a risk perspective. The following topics are addressed in this chapter: Review of the regulatory system Laws and regulations: the differences Role of the states Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Major toxic chemical laws administered by the U.S. EPA Legislative tools for controlling water pollution Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 Clean Air Act Occupational Safety and Health Act EPA’s Risk Management Program Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 5.2 Regulatory System Over the past four decades, environmental regulation has become a system in which laws, regulations, and guidelines have become interrelated. The history and development of this regulatory system has led to laws that focus principally on only one environmental medium independently at a time, i.e., air, water, or land. Some environmental managers feel that more needs to be done to manage all of the media simultaneously and in an integrated way. Hopefully, the environmental regulatory system will evolve into a truly integrated, multimedia management framework in the future. Federal laws are the product of Congress...
eBook - ePubThe Laws That Shaped America
Fifteen Acts of Congress and Their Lasting Impact
- Dennis W. Johnson(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...12 ROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 The nineteen-seventies absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters and our living environment. It is literally now or never. Richard M. Nixon, on signing NEPA into law (January 1, 1970) Thank God for NEPA, because there were so many pressures to make a selection for technology that might have been forced upon us and that would have been wrong for the country. Admiral James Watkins, Secretary of Energy (1992) The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) holds the unusual honor of being the most successful environmental law in the world and the most disappointing. Oliver A. Houck (2000) Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue was jammed, not with the usual taxis and delivery trucks, but with a huge, light-hearted throng of people that stretched from Forty-Third Street up sixteen blocks to Central Park. Tens of thousands packed Union Square; thousands more crowded into a block-long polyethylene “bubble” on Seventeenth Street, where they could breathe pure, filtered air. A favorite T-shirt sported a warning from the popular cartoon character Pogo: “We have met the enemy and they is us!” Throughout the country, millions of students, environmental activists, and ordinary citizens attended teach-ins, listened to speeches, and took action. Wearing gas masks, some protestors buried automobiles in mock funerals to symbolize the end of the era of fossil fuels. Some dumped buckets of rotting fish onto the marble floors of electric utility and chemical companies. Others rolled up their sleeves and cleaned up beaches, painted park benches, swept debris from drainage ditches, pulled old tires, discarded car batteries, and other detritus out of rivers and streams...
- W. David Yates(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...The Act also contains provisions to improve visibility near National Parks and other parts of the country. Key Points to Remember on Environmental Management The National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) was signed into law on January 1, 1970. Its major focus was to require the federal government to use all practicable means to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony. NEPA specifically requires all federal agencies to prepare detailed EISs that assess the environmental impact of and alternatives to major federal actions significantly affecting the environment. NEPA establishes the CEQ, which is specifically appointed to oversee the provisions of NEPA. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act is the primary policy of the United States governing the disposal of solid and hazardous wastes. RCRA specifically covers solid and hazardous waste, universal waste, used oil management, and USTs. Solid waste means any garbage or refuse; sludge from a wastewater treatment plant, water supply treatment plant, or air pollution control facility; and other discarded material, including solid, liquid, semisolid, or contained gaseous material resulting from industrial, commercial, mining, and agricultural operations, and from community activities...
eBook - ePubState Of The Union 1994
The Clinton Administration And The Nation In Profile
- Richard Caplan, John Feffer, Gerald Horne, John Cavanagh(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The first legislative product borne of that concern was the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It established a policy that not only called for repairing the nation's badly polluted environment but specified how that goal was to be achieved: through efforts to "prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere." 1 Somehow between NEPA and the implementation of the Act that followed, the emphasis shifted from a strategy of prevention or elimination of pollution to one of reduction or control of pollution. The EPA determined that remediation could be accomplished by appending control devices to the sources of pollution—for example, by attaching catalytic converters to automobile exhausts or scrubbers to power plants. The twenty-three-year extort to improve the environment has tested the capabilities of these two strategies, albeit inadvertently. The attempt to improve air pollution has relied almost entirely on control devices that seek to trap or destroy pollutants after they have been produced. Only lead, among the standard pollutants, has been subject to efforts to prevent its emission altogether, mainly by removing it from gasoline. The different results each strategy has achieved are striking: Between 1975 and 1990, annual emissions of lead decreased by 95 percent while during that same period the average for the remaining pollutants fell by only 18 percent. 2 The same story can be told for DDT, PCBs, mercury, phosphates, and Strontium 90. In each case significant remediation (70 to 95 percent) was achieved by preventing the generation of the pollutant in the first place rather than by attempting to trap or destroy it after it has been produced. Thus DDT and PCBs have been banned; mercury is no longer used in electrolytic chlorine production; the use of phosphates in detergents has been severely restricted; and the end of atmospheric nuclear bomb tests has curbed strontium 90 emissions...
