Environmental Protection

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Environmental Protection
Environmental Protection seeks to safeguard the quality of the environment through effective regulation of activities that have the potential to impact on air, water and land. This involves engagement with businesses and the public to provide information and advice; monitoring, recording, reporting and setting standards for compliance; issuing consents, licences and authorisations and enforcing legislation. There are five distinct functional units dealing with strategy and cross-cutting issues, water quality, land and resource management (which includes waste and contaminated land), industrial pollution and drinking water for public and private supplies. Please select one of our units from the menu on the left to find out more. Air quality and climate change are managed through the Department of the Environment’s Environmental Policy Division. Enforcement is based on fair but firm regulation. View details of our Enforcement and Prosecution Policy ( pdf 92.6 KB )


Towards Resource ManagementThe Northern Ireland Waste Management Strategy 2006 - 2020
Richard Rogers launched the new Waste Management Strategy for Northern Ireland on the 30th March 2006 at Stormont.
Towards Resource Management: The Northern Ireland Waste Management Strategy 2006 - 2020 ( pdf - 2MB)
The new Waste Management Strategy places more emphasis on waste prevention. It reinforces the need to increase waste recycling and recovery through a mixture of approaches including the renewal of recycling targets, focused awareness campaigns and the possible introduction of incentive schemes.


For guidance on Environmental legislation and your business visitthe Netregs website.



Water Pollution Hotline
0800 80 70 60
This service should be used to report all urgent water pollution incidents.
During office hours your call will be connected to our Headquarters in Belfast. Outside normal hours, calls are diverted to the Environment Agency where details of your call will be logged and then passed to the Duty Emergency Pollution Officer in Northern Ireland.

email: Emergency-Pollution@doeni.gov.ukUse this service if you would like to report a pollution incident that does not require immediate attention. Please note this method of reporting is only checked during working hours.
View further information about online reporting

For access to information on environmental research in the island of Ireland visit the aNSwer website.