Waste Oils gets environmental permit

A six-month environmental permit (IPPC) was this morning granted to Waste Oils to store, collect and separate waste oil of commercial and domestic operations before exporting at a site in Menqa.

The Malta Environment and Planning Authority approved the permit , applied for in July 2008, against a number of conditions, including that the company cannot discharge anything to the ground and surface water.

There has to be visual weekly inspections of the tank by an independent engineer, chemicals cannot be released into the environment and there has to be no land emissions.

The operator also has to commission a technical expert to issue weekly reports which have to be given to the authority.

All this information will be fully accessible to the public on request and available on the Mepa website.

Mepa said in a statement that this permit concluded the process of brining all existing high-risk installations in Malta in line with the IPPC Directive of the EU.

In the EU context, these installations pose the greatest environmental risk locally.

Earlier this year, Mepa reported that its environmental inspectors had caught this company discharging oil-contaminated wastewater into the sewage system.

The company had, however, denied it was ever caught by Mepa discharging oil-contaminated waste into the sewers and a spokesman said that the only incident occurred when during an inspection by Water Services Corporation it was discovered that the company had an irregular connection to the main sewage system and this was immediately closed.