Pembrokeshire Community Safety Partnership has received funding from the Welsh Assembly Government's 'Local Environmental Quality' budget, with the aim of improving the quality of our environment and raising awareness of the need to protect our finest natural local assets.

The grant has enabled the purchase of equipment (available to partner agencies from the local authority's emergency planning unit) which will help fulfil the projects aims to:

• Provide a highly visible deterrent together with the means to respond to, investigate and deal with incidents of environmental crime in previously difficult to reach (conventionally) locations.

• Deter anti-social behaviour and some criminal activities

• Improve and maintain a clean and safe environment which residents and visitors to the county can enjoy and wish to return to.

• Create environments that are more easily maintained and less subject to vandalism

• Remove signs of 'environmental neglect'

• Reduce the impact of remote moorland fires

• Assist in the environmentally sustainable management of the Pembrokeshire coast

• Create an environment that will secure long term commercial investors and encourage tourism.

• To raise awareness of the problems created by illegal disposal of waste along the coastline of Pembrokeshire

• Maintenance and enhancement of environmental education opportunities.

The specialist equipment includes an eight wheel drive, amphibious 'Argo Cat' vehicle and a double cab Land Rover pick-up equipped with CCTV.

These vehicles have already been used to great effect within the county and have successfully removed fly tipped rubbish from the Preseli Hills, as well as flotsam and jetsam from some of our finest beaches.

The Argo Cat can also be used in emergency response work to lay booms to protect the coast from oil spills and is exceptionally useful in speeding up such operations as it can reach places that no other vehicle can.

The Land Rover, meanwhile, is equipped with CCTV and has a fully extendable four-metre mast designed to collect evidence of illegally tipped waste, offenders of which can expect be prosecuted if caught contaminating the county.

Partner agencies involved in this project include Pembrokeshire County Council, Dyfed Powys Police, Mid and West Wales Fire Service, National Park, Milford Haven Port Authority, Countryside Council For Wales, Keep Wales Tidy, Pembrokeshire Community Safety Partnership, Chevron Texaco, and W.A.G.