Environment Agency staff have ‘major concerns’ about proposed Anaerobic Digester

The Environment Agency has serious questions to answer about how it came to grant an environmental permit to a controversial proposed Anaerobic Digester in the Wye catchment, despite local staff raising ‘major concerns’ about the impact it could have on the River Wye. 

Internal EA correspondence, which we obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveals local EA staff expressing strong reservations about the development.

The proposed Anaerobic Digester would be situated at Whitwick Manor, between Hereford and Bromyard, and proposes to take around 100,000 tonnes of poultry manure a year alongside apple pomace and liquid wastes. 

The EA’s national permitting team granted an environmental permit for the site in August last year. 

Yet prior to that, in March 2024, a Herefordshire EA Environment Officer emailed the permit team saying, “I have major concerns that if we granted this permit the discharge would have a major impact on the Wye as in my professional opinion the technology being proposed is not suitable to treat the material coming in to the plant”.

The local EA Land and Water team then emailed an official comment to the permit team saying, “Wetland Treatment Systems are in our experience unable to produce a consistent level of treatment and are not suitable for an effluent of this nature discharging into the Wye SAC and SSSI system. As an Area Team we have strong concerns regarding the impact on the River Wye if this permit were to be granted.”

One specialist within the EA raised concerns about the treatment of effluent, saying they could “see scant evidence” to support the claims regarding quality of the discharge. Furthermore, the specialist said, “I am also concerned about any claims for a reedbed system removing phosphates. Yes, consistent rates of P removal may be achievable in the early years of the operation of a reedbed system. However, P removal will be mainly by absorption and similar processes and binding sites may quickly become saturated and thence P removal rates will inevitably decline over time. As this happens, there may also be seasonal net emission of P from such a system.”

As well as querying the efficacy of the wetland system, the correspondence also raises other concerns over air quality impacts and queries why Natural England isn’t being properly consulted. 

Despite the concerns being raised by local EA staff, who best know the area, habitat and local risk factors, the national permitting team issued a permit for the site.

As a result of uncovering this correspondence, we have submitted a further objection to the development arguing that Herefordshire Council should give no weight to the fact that the applicant has been granted an environmental permit. We had already submitted an initial objection. 

Planning permission for the Anaerobic Digester is yet to be determined, so all eyes now turn to Herefordshire Council. Can it possibly be assured, beyond reasonable scientific doubt, that the project will not have a significant adverse impact on the River Wye? EA officers are evidently worried that it will.