Chemical company 3M in Zwijndrecht denies that it would have put pressure on the environmental inspectorate to achieve lax enforcement of environmental legislation. 3M is doing this in response to teasers of the ‘Pano’ program distributed by VRT, which reported on Wednesday with (anonymous) testimonies about the PFOS affair and the way in which the environmental inspectorate has dealt with pollution at companies around the Antwerp area over the past 15 years. harbor around.
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‘3M noted in the teasers for tonight’s VRT Pano report that anonymous witnesses within the environmental inspection it is suggested that environmental enforcement was taken lightly, whether or not under pressure from 3M,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
‘Close cooperation with environmental authorities’
‘Inappropriate agreements have never been made with environmental inspectors and there never will be. On the contrary, we are working closely with the various environmental authorities to lower the discharge limits for certain substances and we will continue to do so.’
3M says it continuously invests in ‘technology to make essential products’, but also aims to ‘maximize our environmental footprint’ by limiting discharges. ‘Recent sampling confirms that the additional purification capacity is bearing fruit’, the company believes.
• Polluter 3M does not pay, he even passes the checkout
According to VRT, anonymous environmental inspectors testify in ‘Pano’ about, among other things, a serious shortage of personnel, caused by cutbacks, and political influence through their superiors.
Anaf calls on anonymous officials to testify
The Flemish Commission of Inquiry PFAS-PFOS will meet again on Friday. A hearing with representatives of Oosterweel client Lantis is then planned in the Flemish Parliament.
• Hannes Anaf, Chair of the PFOS Commission of Inquiry
The chairman of that committee, Hannes Anaf (Vooruit), calls on the witnesses to provide the committee with their information. ‘What a number of anonymous officials testified in the report was truly hallucinatory. I would therefore like to call on them to provide all information and their testimony, possibly anonymously as whistleblowers, to our investigative committee. Because we want to get to the bottom of it. To find out who made the mistake, but also to ensure that this cannot happen again in the future.’
‘Flemish government looks after large companies’
‘The testimonies in the Pano report show that there is political pressure that environmental inspectors have to deal with. It is also no secret that the Flemish government wants to create a favorable permit climate in the first place. The Flemish government does not succeed in protecting its citizens, but does like to take care of the large companies. That is very bad’, says Anaf.
• 3M received millions in Flemish subsidies and ‘ecological’ support
Joke Schauvliege (CD&V), who was Minister of the Environment from 2009 to 2019, is very clear: there has never been any influence from her cabinet on the environmental inspection, she tells VRT NWS. According to Schauvliege, the inspectorate worked completely autonomously.
‘Never put economy above health’
On the personnel cuts, the former minister says that she implemented the coalition agreement, which set a saving of 6 percent for all administrations. According to Schauvliege, however, there were ‘moderate and selective savings on environmental enforcement’, although not everyone who retired could be replaced within the service.
‘As a minister, I have never put economy above health or the environment’, says Schauvliege. She now wishes to give her full cooperation to the inquiry committee in the Flemish Parliament. “I call on the sources of the ‘Pano’ report to step down from anonymity and share all their information with the investigative committee so that the bad apples go out of the system and so that all possible mistakes that have been made can be exposed.” said Joke Schauvliege to VRT NWS.
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