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FIE UPDATES
Fish farming 'international bad boy' to speak in Bantry
EU forces Ireland to assess Food Harvest 2020
Government agency slams BIM Galway Bay 'super farm'
Extent of Toxic Island cleanup challenged
Access to information complaint to feature at EU law conference
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EVENTS THIS WEEK
Enforcing European Union Environmental Law, UCC, 2-6pm
UCC Brookfield Health Science Complex
The Dangers of Fish Farming
Maritime Hotel, Bantry, 7.30 PM
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FISH FARMING'S 'PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1' TO BOOST IRISH CAMPAIGNS
A large crowd from around Ireland is now expected when international salmon activist Don Staniford speaks at a public meeting in Bantry, County Cork this Friday.
Opponents not only of the proposed expansion in Bantry Bay by Marine Harvest but those opposed to BIM's 'super salmon farm' in Galway Bay are expected to attend.
Staniford, who has been described by aquaculture trade media as salmon farming's "public enemy number 1", will be accompanied by Elena Edwards of the Canadian WILD SALMON FIRST! campaign and Dr. Roderick O'Sullivan, the author of the first study on salmon farming in Ireland in 1989.
In what is seen a major legal victory for anti-salmon farming activists, Staniford was last month cleared by the Canadian British Columbia Supreme Court of defamation for a series of shock ads.
Staniford says that 'We need to speak for the salmon and stand tall against the Norwegian-owned corporations killing our wild fish, spreading infectious diseases and misinformation about the health of farmed salmon.' For consumers, he says 'the choice is clear: Quit eating farmed salmon or keep endangering the health of wild salmon and our global ocean.'
The meeting will be hosted by Save Bantry Bay in Bantry on Friday, 23 November 2012 at 7.30 PM in the Maritime Hotel, Bantry.
Read the Guardian about the 'Bad Boys' | Visit the Save Bantry Bay website
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 EU FORCES GOVERNMENT TO FULLY ASSESS 'FOOD HARVEST 2020' The European Commission has forced Ireland to undertake full legal assessment of Food Harvest 2020 after complaints from FIE led to an EU 'Pilot' investigation.
The Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney told the Dail that the ambitious expansion plans under Food Harvest 2020 was an 'industry led initiative' and so not a Government Plan which would require a strategic environmental assessment [SEA] under the SEA Directive. He made no reference to the Habitats Directive, which requires a separate 'Appropriate Assessment' [AA] to ensure sites designated for nature protection are not damaged.
Instead, he established a High Level Implementation Committee which he chairs to oversee an ad hoc 'environmental analysis of various scenarios'.
FIE had written to Environmental Commissioners Dacin Ciolos [Agriculture] and Janez Potocnik [Environment] in July of this year. The Commissioners told FIE 'We fully share your view that Food Harvest 2020 would benefit from both an Strategic Environmental Assessment under that Directive and from an Appropriate Assessment under the Habitats Directive'.
Now, in a response to letters to the Minister for Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Dennihan from FIE and the IWT [Irish Wildlife Trust] his office has revealed that 'Officials from the DAFM [Coveney's Department of Agriculture, Food, and Marine] had engaged in detailed discussions with DG Environment and a meeting was held in Brussels in early October'. Dennihan's office told the groups that while the Commission accepted that a 'substantial amount of work has been carried out to date', the Government would now 'recast the focus of the consultant's work so that the final report will represent both an AA and an SEA on FH2020'.
Read the Minister's letter | See the joint IWT and FIE Press Release
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GOVERNMENT AGENCY SLAMS GALWAY BAY FISH FARM
EIS conclusions 'not supported by any scientific investigation'
A submission by the Government agency Inland Fisheries Ireland [IFI] slams the proposed Galway Bay Fish Farm. The application for the 15,000 ton salmon farm - which would be the biggest in Europe - is being made by the semi-state agency who will then franchise the license to the highest bidder.
IFI points out that 'no data is provided on the known migration routes of salmonids' to support BIM's claim that there is a 'very low to zero risk of farmed salmon sea lice infecting wild salmon', that 'the extensive literature published on interactions of sea trout and salmon lice in Ireland are not referred to or discussed', and that the sea lice issue is 'a legitimate concern in this proposal'.
It points out that the overwhelming research showing genetic modification of wild salmon are absent with the two papers referred to actually coming to the 'opposite conclusion' of that reported in the EIA.
BIM did not included the submission on their website with the other consultees because it was received on 3 October, 2012. The statutory consultation period closed on 2 October, 2012.
Inland Fisheries Ireland submission on its website | Details of new international study showing 38% wild salmon mortalities due to sea lice
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TOXIC DUMP PLAN QUESTIONED
At a public meeting to present Cork County Council's plan to remediate the East Tip hazardous waste dump on Haulbowline Island, County Cork, FIE's Tony Lowes challenged the project Director Peter Young about the failure to address the larger adjacent site of the steel works itself.
While the East Tip covers 9 hectares, a Report by Peter Young in 2002 detailed that the contamination also extended across the 12 hectare steel plant site itself. Peter Young confirmed the danger in his affidavit for the Government's unsuccessful court case seeking to recover remedial costs from the liquidator of the insolvent steel company in 2004. As the East Tip and the Steel plant are both on reclaimed ground, pollution will continue to flow unhindered between the two and into the environment unless the job is completed.
Tony Lowes asked the Project Director, who assured the meeting of his experience at remediation of steel works sites all over Europe, if he had ever remediated a steel works site that ignored the site of the operations itself. He had no reply.
Young told the meeting that no further contaminated material would have to be exported, belying all previous estimates after 113,000 tons had been sent to Germany for decontamination at which point Minister John Gormley cancelled the contract in 2010, leading to a plethora of legal cases.
After the meeting, Young suggested to FIE that if €40m allocated for the clean-up by the current Government was indeed ring-fenced, the funds would be ample to cover the entire 21 hectare licensed area rather than just the 9 hectares of the East Tip
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FIE COMPLAINT TO FEATURE AT UCC ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CONFERENCE
FIE's 'Complaint to the European Commission regarding bad transposition and bad application of Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information' will feature at the UCC conference on 'Enforcing European Environment Law'.
The complaint, which will be covered both by FIE speaker Andrew Jackson, author of the complaint, and Antoinette Long, the Commission representative. It draws together and provides specific detail on 16 individual complaints.
These include failures to transpose the EU Regulations in relation to 'active dissemination' of information as well as specific cases of failures to meet the requirements of the Regulations:
- deeming cases 'settled' and making no ruling on the behaviour of the state authority
- the failure to require reasons to be given in writing
- lack of resources and staff shortages for the Commissioner for Information leading to delays of many years in some of our cases
- the fees required
- poor handling of many cases
- the lack of consolidated legislation
- the unavailability of many court judgements and indeed to the Information Regulations themselves, including the new costs rules for legal actions.
Specific complaints include the general failure of local authorities to maintain their registers of extractive industries and the high cost of the release of the 1973 aerial survey of Ireland to help defeat developers (particularly quarries) use of exemptions to the planning laws by fraudulently claiming pre 1963 establishments. [Photo: Dr. Aine Ryall, Conference organiser]
Conference details | Text of complaint
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