GE Healthcare violates discharge permit in Cork

A Cork Harbour biochemical company violated its wastewater discharge permit more than once a month in 2004.

GE Healthcare of Carrigtohill breached its Cork County Council permit for wastewater discharge on 13 separate occasions, earning the facility a special note in its parent company's Good Citizenship Report 2005, released this week.

The Good Citizenship Report is an annual report of the activities of companies within the GE Capital conglomerate. GE Capital is involved in a range of businesses from windfarms to healthcare and finance. It took over Amersham plc, owner of the Cork plant, in 2003.

This week the Good Citizenship Report highlighted issues "where contaminants coming into the facility exceeded what we were allowed to discharge". It continued: "In 2004, 13 of our exceedences came from one newly acquired site in Ireland, which is now in compliance."

A company spokesman based at the GE Healthcare head office in the UK confirmed yesterday that the Irish plant referred to was the former Amersham plant in Cork. But he said the breaches of the wastewater licence were simply in the volume of saltwater discharged and did not involve pollution. He said the issue had been resolved by reducing the amount of water involved, which he acknowledged may give rise to "another issue" of salt solids forming.

But he maintained that the company was working on resolution of this with Cork County Council. "It is not pollution, but the volumes of wastewater did exceed our permit so we mentioned it as part of our good citizenship report," he said, adding that the wastewater was discharged to the sewers and not directly into the harbour.

Cork County Council said GE Healthcare was permitted to discharge 200 cubic metres of wastewater a day and that values had risen as high as 300 cubic metres on occasions. But a council spokeswoman said the occurrence was predicted as a result of expansion at the plant and the company had been proactive in the manner with which the issue was addressed. The comapny was now permitted to discharge up to 437 cubic metres a day.

GE Healthcare is backed by the IDA and employs about 530 people making contrasting fluids for use in x-rays.

The fluids are used to assist the x-ray to detect items other than bone.

As part of the process in Cork, water is softened and distilled and wastewater carrying salt is discharged to the municipal drains.