Going against the flow – Part 4 (7/2022)

IV.2. Cases of inconsequential water pollution fees

What is the actual impact of pollution fee rates on industries? The case of the Artois-Picardie river basin district in northern France, which includes numerous industrial areas scattered across the district, is appropriate to try to determine this impact. In 2022, the latest available data on French pollutant emission register date back to 2020 (Géorisques, 2022).

That year, the Heineken brewery (Mons-en-Barœul) released pollutants into the Marque river via a waste water treatment plant. Heineken reported the discharge of 104 tons of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) and 310 tons of chemical oxygen demand or COD. Biochemical oxygen demand measures the amount of dissolved oxygen used by some microorganisms to decompose organic matter. The more BOD5 is discharged, the more dissolved oxygen levels drop, the more degraded the aquatic environment gets. For its 104 tons of BOD5 and 310 tons of COD, Heineken had to pay about 66,000 euros in water pollution fees. For a company whose annual turnover was 23,7 billion euros in 2020, 66,000 euros is not a deterrent (Agence de l’eau Artois-Picardie, 2018 [a]; Géorisques, 2022; Pleinchamp, 2021; Real Tech Inc., 2017 [b]).

Ajinomoto is another big regional industry. In 2020, this pharmaceutical and agri-food company declared having dumped 319 tons of nitrogen and 1,580 tons of COD in the Somme canal. It resulted in a water pollution fee of 234,000 euro or 0.003 percent of the 7.8 billion euros worth of products Ajinomoto sold in 2020. Another example of a rather large industry taking advantage of low pollution fee rates is the Herta meat industry, which reported important emissions in the Ternoise river in 2020 : 708 tons of COD, 335 tons of BOD5 and 9.2 tons of phosphorus. Hence a water pollution fee of 188,000 euros. It represents a trivial 0.02 percent of Herta’s 788 million euro annual turnover (Agence de l’eau Artois-Picardie, 2018 [a]; Ajinomoto, 2020; Géorisques, 2022; Societe.com, 2021 [a]).

Among big local water polluters of the Artois-Picardie river district, there is also a research and development unit of the Nestlé agrifood giant. In 2019, Nestlé reported that this unit released 2,759 tons of COD, 445 tons of BOD5, 21 tons of phosphorus, 242 tons of nitrogen and 613 tons of materials in suspension into the Selle and Somme rivers via a waste water treatment plant. As a result, Nestlé was charged 636,000 euros, another paltry pollution fee for an industry whose annual turnover was 86 billion euros in 2019 (Agence de l’eau Artois-Picardie, 2018 [a]; Les Echos, 2020; Géorisques, 2022).

What about smaller local industries in Artois-Picardie and elsewhere in France? Are they deterred in any way by water pollution taxes? A case in point in Artois-Picardie is the Douaisienne d’Abattage Pruvost Leroy meat processing industry. In 2020, this industry released 216 tons of COD and 103 tons of BOD5 into the Scarpe river via a waste water treatment plant. When compared to its size (44 employees and 8.1 million euros of annual turnover), it is clear that Douaisienne d’Abattage discharges large loads of pollutants. But its 2020 water pollution fee of 54,000 euros was a mere 0.7 percent of its annual turnover, which fits easily into a company’s budget (Agence de l’eau Artois-Picardie, 2018 [a]; Géorisques, 2022; Societe.com, 2021 [b]).

The same can be said for a medium-sized local industry with substantial discharges of pollutants like the Synthexim chemical industry. In 2020, this company, made of 105 workers and generating 17 million euros of annual turnover, emitted 233 kilos of chloroform, 388 kilos of toluene (classified as dangerous for the environment), 359 kilos of methylene chloride, 10 kilos of ethylene chloride, 328 tons of COD and 123 tons of BOD5 in the delta of the Aa river via a waste water treatment plant. Synthexim was consequently charged 100,000 euros for water pollution, that is 0.6 percent of its annual turnover. In the end, in France and elsewhere in the EU, even small or medium-sized local industries with substantial emissions get away with inconsequential penalties, just like the big ones (Agence de l’eau Artois-Picardie, 2018 [a]; Géorisques, 2022; Societe.com, 2021 [c]).

In France, there are at least three aggravating factors to these friendly water pollution fees:

1. First, annual water pollution thresholds under which industries pay no fee benefit a whole lot of so-called “small polluters”, whether the latter discharge their pollutants via a waste water treatment plant or directly into water. So these “small polluters” do not have anything to pay when they discharge, among other things, less than 5,200 kilograms of materials in suspension, less than 880 kilos of nitrogen, less than 9,900 kilos of COD or less than 200 kilos of eight toxic metals like lead or nickel (classified as métox with weighting coefficients to calculate pollution fees from 1 for chromium to 50 for mercury). I am just giving a few examples of exemption from water pollution fees (Parlement français, 2021 [a], L213-10-2 [art. 84 LEMA]).

2. There is a second aggravating factor to friendly pollution fees: most industries monitor themselves their release of pollutants into water. Then these industries send their data to the competent authorities of the river basin district where they release pollutants. In France, they send these data to the district’s water agency (Parlement français, 2020 [a], articles R213-48-6 to R213-48-9).

3. Third aggravating factor, an external and regular monitoring of pollutant release only occurs when industries exceed at least one of the legal pollution thresholds. For instance, annual thresholds are set at 600 tons for materials in suspension and chemical oxygen demand, at 40 tons for nitrogen, at 10 tons for phosphorus and at 10 tons too for the eight dangerous metals in the métox category. Moreover, polluters who exceed these annual thresholds have a special privilege. The industry subject to external monitoring can pick and choose any State-approved external agency for the control. State authorities cannot afford to verify the kind of relationship that exists between the industry and the monitoring agency. In 2018 in Artois-Picardie, monitoring agencies controlled only 20 percent of the industries subject to water pollution fees (AEAP, 2022 [a], p.72; Parlement français, 2020 [a], articles R213-48-6 to R213-48-9).

This discussion on water pollution fees for industries ends with a remark: most specific cases of polluting industries mentioned here do not cover the 45 priority substances under EU legislation, substances like benzene, dichloromethane or lead. If we add this problem to other pollutants mentioned here like nitrogen, materials in suspension or oxidizable matter, the picture gets even bleaker. An article published in 2019 in The Science of Total Environment focused on the impact of these priority substances on EU rivers. It sums up this impact as follows: “Large industrial point source emissions [are] generally important at a local level”… (Aloe et al., 2019)