4 Case Studies showing Farm related Environmental Damage
You have got 1,500 acres of crops to apply liquid fertiliser to. You don’t finish the last Ioad of the evening until 9.30 p.m. and then go home for a well-earned rest.
When you arrive back at the yard at 7.00 a.m. the next morning you notice a stream of liquid fertiliser that has run down the middle of the yard into a ditch. That ditch empties into a small stream approximately quarter of a mile away. It turns out that the valve on the liquid fertiliser tank was faulty, had obviously sprung a leak overnight and allowed the full 40,000 litres to discharge itself. Your first call has got to be to the Environment Agency who will send a representative to oversee the cleanup operations.
In the meantime, you are advised by them to contract a specialist environmental contractor who will try and stop any more liquid fertiliser entering the small stream. It is likely that these contractors will be involved for one to two weeks in trying to minimise the amount of fertiliser that actually gets into the watercourse. A report will then have to be prepared for the Environment Agency which involves calling in specialist environmental consultants as to how the damage to both flora and fauna can be rectified. The cost of this report alone can run into tens of thousands of pounds.
Once the Environment Agency has agreed a course of action, specialist contractors will carry out this work again costing potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds. .
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Diesel theft from farms has been a major problem for many years. Despite much improved security measures it is almost impossible to stop this risk entirely. Even with modern bunded plastic tanks criminals can actually drill through the side of these tanks, attach and pump out as much diesel as they require. These holes tend to be towards the bottom of the tank leaving the rest of the diesel to spill out onto the land. In a typical incident approximately 8,000 litres of red diesel ran across the farmyard and into the home paddock adjoining the farmhouse and yard. A soil bund was created by the quick thinking farmer stopping the diesel spreading into a watercourse or onto any third party land. Without a specialist environmental insurance the cleanup costs on the farmers land would not be covered.
In this case three years ago the cleanup cost around £13,000. If this incident were to happen today the client would have to inform the Environment Agency which would most probably call in specialist contractors to perform the bunding work. Under today’s laws any soil that was contaminated by the diesel would be treated as contaminated waste and would have to be removed from the farm. Further requirements could be the replacement of the soil and any permanent pasture that had been lost, leading to expensive cleanup costs for farmers who were victims in this crime.
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The following case took place on a dairy farm some time ago. A drain at the bottom of the farmyard collected all of the washings and muck from the yard. It was then supposed to drain into the slurry store. Unknown to the farmer there was a break in the drain and the yard water and washings were able to seep into a canal that was approximately 100 metres from the farm, causing the death of fish and damage to insects and plants. The farmer did not realise that this was happening until the source was eventually traced back to his farm by the regulator. Today’s environmental regulation would require extensive cleanup costs and replacement of the fish. As the leak took place over a period of six months, the farmer’s public liability policy would not apply, but a specialist environmental policy would.
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It’s autumn, and you have decided to plough up one of 2 twenty acre grassland fields to put down to arable for next harvest. The task is given to your new tractor driver. An hour later you take a walk to check on his progress to find that he is well into the job, but he’s ploughing the wrong field. The field he is ploughing contains a rare species of orchid that the local university periodically monitored and studied and this site is now 18 inches under. You are reported to the Environment Agency by the university and you are prosecuted for destruction of the site. You will also have to pay for the reinstatement cost of establishing that species of orchid once more. This simple mistake could take years and leave you paying a bill for thousands of pounds.
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