Environment ministers of EEC agree on new five-year programme
Environment ministers of the nine European Common Market countries have agreed on a new five-year programme that foresees an expansion of joint regulations and activities in many new areas, including the requirement of an environmental impact statement for major projects.
Meeting at the headquarters of the European Economic Community (EEC), the officials also agreed to have the group ratify the Rhine and Mediterranean anti-pollution treaties and undertake a systematic study of the lead intake into the bloodstream of the EEC population. But the ministers managed only to begin difficult negotiations on legislation to curtail pollution from titanium dioxide and paper pulp industries and on water standards.
The new five-year programme that will guide EEC environmental action from 1977 to 1981 was publicly introduced in March by the EEC Commission officials who drafted it. Although a continuation of the previous EEC activities that concentrated on water pollution, it now incorporates new or enlarged plans in a variety of new sectors. These include proposals to combat noise, air and waste problems, environmental issues in developing countries, land use, and the institution of a European environmental impact statement. The special problems of urbanization and agricultural modernization will also be studied and acted upon.
Massive tree-planting programme in Athens area
The Greek Government has announced an ambitious programme to increase the woodland of the Athens area and improve its dangerously polluted environment. A total of 11 million trees, mostly pine and cypress, are to be planted on 11 329 hectares of hillocks around Athens, increasing the city's greenery from 2.5 to 10 percent.
Deer not put off by irrigation with municipal wastewater
Two experts who investigated the influence of wastewater irrigation on the quantity and quality of forage production, and white-tailed deer feeding response in central Pennsylvania, have found that semi-free ranging deer did not seem to be deterred from using the area irrigated in this way.
"There was no indication that they were repelled by the appearance of the irrigation equipment, the periodic process of irrigation, or any odours that might be associated with the chlorinated wastewater," Richard L. Dressler and Gene W. Wood, of Pennsylvania State University, said in a report published in the Journal of Wildlife Management (October 1976).
