Limburg water board WML has called for new rules to govern the dumping of chemicals in the river Maas after it emerged melamine had been discharged into the water this summer.

Waste processing firm Sitech has a contract to purify water from the Chemelot industrial complex near Sittard-Geleen and the melamine was found in water that had gone through the purification process, local broadcaster 1Limburg said.

WML says it has had enough of discharges from Chemelot causing problems for the water supply. The Maas was unsuitable as a source of drinking water for a time last year because it had been polluted with pyrazole.

Sitech says it has done nothing wrong by discharging the chemical into the river because it has a permit to do so. However, the permit does not say how much can be dumped into the Maas and WML is now demanding clear guidelines are established.

‘We know what can be discharged into the Maas but if we had strict rules about how much, everyone would know where they were,’ a WML spokesman told the broadcaster.