Like other environmental services, FUMO is responsible for issuing permits, supervising and enforcing companies. One important task is monitoring compliance with environmental regulations in high-risk companies that work with hazardous materials.
All regional broadcasters and the National Surveillance Organization (NOS) have analyzed 29 environmental services. This shows that quality is under pressure and some services do not meet their quality requirements. Environmental services are unable to conduct adequate environmental checks.
Provinces and municipalities are legally required to establish quality assurance rules. Quality requirements relate, among other things, to the level of education and work experience of employees and the frequency with which certain activities are carried out.
A number of environmental services struggle to meet these quality standards.
One environmental service that is struggling is FUMO in Fryslån. Of the 27 quality requirements, they scored insufficient on eleven. This concerns, for example, soil supervision and enforcement, fire safety and wastewater.
Trouble is waiting to happen, says Chel Jonker, an environmental chemist at Utrecht University: “If you don’t know what substances are in them because you don’t know enough, you can’t assess the risks, or if you don’t know what additional checks you can do.”
