Iceland’s Act on Hygiene and Pollution Prevention establishes a broad framework for protecting healthy living conditions and maintaining a clean, unpolluted environment. Its objectives include preventing or reducing emissions to air, water and soil and preventing waste generation. The Act applies broadly to activities and projects in Iceland, its internal and territorial waters, continental shelf, airspace and exclusive economic zone, as well as Icelandic-flagged vessels, insofar as those matters are not governed by other legislation. It expressly extends to activities in the exclusive economic zone involving the exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons. The hygiene (hollustuvernd) component of the Act concerns supervision of conditions that can affect human health, including premises and their surroundings, safety-related conditions, sanitation, pest control and communicable-disease prevention. The Minister may establish detailed requirements for housing, accommodation and restaurants, schools and childcare facilities, healthcare and residential institutions, swimming and bathing facilities, hairdressers, massage and tattoo establishments, public venues, transport facilities and numerous other premises and activities. Municipal health authorities therefore play an important role in supervising hygiene and local environmental-health conditions. The pollution-prevention provisions regulate activities capable of polluting air, water or soil and provide for operating permits, registration requirements, emission limits, monitoring and the use of best available techniques (BAT). They cover, among other things, wastewater, water and soil pollution, air quality and atmospheric emissions, noise and vibration, industrial installations, plastics and certain waste-related matters. Activities listed in the statutory annexes generally require an operating permit from the Environment and Energy Agency or municipal health committees, and in some circumstances several requirements can be incorporated into a single permit. The Act also contains a substantial specialised regime for geological CO₂ storage, requiring exploration and storage permits, site assessment, monitoring and financial security; it regulates the composition of CO₂ streams, leakage and corrective action, closure, transfer of long-term responsibility to the Environment and Energy Agency, and third-party access to transport and storage infrastructure. Administration and enforcement are divided principally between the Environment and Energy Agency and municipal health committees, with the Agency exercising overall supervision and coordinating environmental monitoring and health inspections nationally. Supervisory authorities may enter premises, inspect activities, take samples and require information; they may issue warnings, impose daily coercive fines of up to ISK 500,000, arrange corrective work at the responsible party’s expense, temporarily stop activities presenting serious risks and withdraw operating permits for non-compliance. The Environment and Energy Agency may additionally impose administrative fines for breaches such as operating without a permit, exceeding emission limits or violating CO₂-storage requirements, with fines reaching ISK 10 million for individuals and ISK 25 million for legal persons. Serious or repeated intentional violations may result in imprisonment for up to four years, while most administrative decisions can be appealed to the Environmental and Natural Resources Appeals Board.
Iceland · 1998-03-12