Twenty percent of the most annoying companies have never been vetted | interior

Category 1 companies are the companies that are likely to cause the most disruption to their surroundings and the environment. They must apply for an environmental permit, which is usually handled by the county. Many companies on that list were not inspected. A priority list of companies that the inspection body believes can have a significant impact on the environment is currently being prepared.

“33 people have been laid off from law enforcement,” division chief Sigrid Raed Shields said Friday. “That means we have to prioritize more, but at a certain point you get to a line where you say for a number of things we can’t Do it just as much as before.”

Enforcement initially focuses on companies to which the European inspection obligation applies. Then comes the turn of companies known for their significant environmental impact.
However, for this information, enforcement often relies on information provided by the companies themselves. After all, they develop materials that were not previously known and therefore there is no way to measure them. This also applies to many new fluorine compounds in the PFAS class. “There are no measurement methods yet for the majority of these materials,” said Raed Shields. So it is difficult for the inspectorate to verify effectively.”

PFOS emissions have been measured in about five hundred companies in Flanders. So they may also work with other fluorine compounds.

The head of the law enforcement department was asked on Friday if they were aware of it political influence. Anonymous employees testified about this in a report of the One “Pano” program. “As a result of this report, Audit Vlaanderen has launched a criminal investigation,” Antwerp’s director of law enforcement, Wilfried van den Acker, said on Friday. “I told them I have information and will share it too. But I don’t want to make any statements about that.”