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Last Update: May 21, 2008
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Argentina: Historic Regulatory Unification on Industrial Air and Liquid Effluent Emissions
August 13, 2007 – Following 6 months of inter-jurisdictional debate and coordination, the three levels of government working on Argentina's Matanza Riachuelo Basin Clean Up Plan , unified the regulatory framework governing effluent and air emissions in the river basin.
The normative unification on liquid effluents which includes regulatory specifications on chromium, lead, pesticides, arsenic, and cyanide , among others, constitutes an unprecedented inter-jurisdictional achievement. Announced during the first formal meeting of an Riachuelo River Basin Authority (an innovative inter-jurisdictional agency created to coordinate the river clean up efforts), the harmonization of norms on industrial effluents and air quality, includes regulatory coherence on 34 toxic substances, for the affected water masses and defines 7 critical air quality factors.
Before this unification, industries operating in the river basin, and discharging effluents into the river system, and gas into the air, faced disorderly and asymmetrical regulations from three levels of government, making control, monitoring, and even compliance, nearly impossible.
The unification of norms is achieved in two stages, first, setting out the basic health and environmental standards for the basin establishing the threshold tolerance limits for the river system with respect to the 34 toxins. In a second stage, industries will participate with authorities in setting the sector-specific limits and delimiting the tolerance levels for each sector of the basin.
Normative conflicts and asymmetries are recognized by industry and control agencies alike, as a historic problem for environmental controls. The Secretary for Environment and Sustainable Development (SAYDS), Romina Picolotti, former head of CEDHA and having worked extensively in her career on environmental control, compliance and enforcement, has made the harmonization of regulatory controls a top priority in her administration.
It is hoped that the experience in the Matanza Riachuelo River Basin , on liquid effluents and air emissions, will serve for other regions to initiate similar processes of regulatory harmonization. The Province of Buenos Aires , home to the majority of industries, as well as to most of the industrial contamination of Argentina , is already considering its own unification of regulations, based on the model established by the River Basin Authority.
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