EPA'S EFFLUENT QUALITY GUIDELINE SCRUTINIZED

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday held a national seminar on "Effluent Quality Guidelines", in Accra. Seventy participants, drawn from state and private organizations, research institutions, industrial establishments and the media, discussed sector-specific and general effluent quality guidelines prepared by the EPA.

The guidelines were aimed at regulating discharges from industrial establishments into natural water bodies in the country.

Addressing the participants, Dr. P.C. Acquah, Executive Director of the EPA, said it had become necessary for the agency to seek the co-operation of all stakeholders in the establishment of practical and enforceable standards of regulating industrial activities and to help industries to adopt cleaner technologies in their production processes.

He said the goal to cleaner production could be achieved by applying know-how, improving technology and changing of attitudes.

"It is also to avoid generating pollution which frequently cuts costs, reduces risks and identifies new opportunities," he noted. Dr. Acquah said it was in fulfillment of that and other goals that the agency considered it appropriate to organize the seminar to create a forum for discussion so as to foster co-operation and understanding between it and Ghanaian industrialists. He observed that most industries in Ghana were sited along water courses and their activities exerted adverse impact on those water bodies over the years.

"They discharge partially treated and untreated effluent into these water courses resulting in gross pollution and the degradation of coastal wetlands located in such industrial areas," he pointed out.

Dr. Acquah said the untreated effluent discharged into the wetlands constituted high pollution loads far in excess of their assimilative capacities.

He stressed that the adoption of the effluent quality guidelines would therefore serve as one of the major steps to minimize or prevent the negative impacts of industry on the environment. Mr. Eddy Mbeah Amoako, Executive Secretary of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), said industries in the country were fully aware of their environmental protection obligations. He said industrialists also appreciated the role of the EPA as a regulatory body on the environment but regretted that few industries had treatment plants to treat their industrial effluent.

Mr. Amoako called for constant education of industrialists by the EPA to keep them on their toes to do the right thing. He said industrialists saw the effluent guidelines as something that would help them to improve upon their environmental programmes.

The executive secretary impressed upon EPA to find ways of treating their wastes since expensive treatment schemes could be carried over customers.