Telford & Wrekin Council Watch - Just How Safe is Stoney Hill?

Just How Safe is Stoney Hill?

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Written by John Franklyn

Sunday, 24 February 2008

Having read Cllr Burrell report on the New Primary at Lightmoor, I notice there is a lack of detail about the hidden dangers at Stoney Hill from dumped chemicals, gas releases and around 1000 dumped bovine carcasses that were infected with BSE, although the carcasses had their heads removed, the spines were still in place.

Again, Cllr Burrell fails to mention that the Environmental Agency objected to this construction because of culverting flood risks.

I also believe that DEFRA are funding research into Stoney Hill and I believe the area has NOT BEEN GIVEN A CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH.

Why has Cllr Burrell not mention these vital issues and why has Cllr Bentley not answered questions put to him?

Would you be happy sending your child to this school?

A Piece by Cllr Adrian Williams

During the 1980s when this tip was being run by Shropshire County Council lorry loads of drums filled with who knows what arrived from Monsanto Chemicals South Wales often under the cover of darkness. When one considers the number of redundant coal shafts surrounding Monsanto it beggars the question as to why these materials were specially sealed with bitumenous compound into drums and transported at great expense to Telford.

The County Council have never had any great allegiance to Telford and the Officers monitoring this tip must have been aware that the drums to which I refer were simply bulldozed from the back of the lorries transporting them and crushed under the huge steel wheels of the tip mechanical shovels. The contents were allowed to run into the ground and were quickly covered with household waste. I personally witnessed this happening on one ocassion and can name the employees whose job it was to carry out these tasks. At that time they, SSC, were also burying the carcasses of cattle from which the heads had been removed presumably for scientific reasons. I am not talking about a few cattle either.

Despite repeated questions I still haven't been given the results of the tests that were carried out last year 2007 and for that reason I am deeply suspicious of them considering they were, I think, ordered and paid for by SCC.

Members of the public are aware of what was happening at Stoney Hill and some I know were never given a convincing reply when they requested answers.

I am fully aware that this is a problem not of the making of Telford & Wrekin Council but I think that we have a duty as councillors to ensure that it is dealt with properly and soon.

Councillor Adrian Williams

How officials in a hurry tried to bury BSE

Independent, The (London), Apr 30, 1997 by Charles Arthur Science Editor

The map on this page is a picture of desperation. It shows where between 1988 and 1991 the Government, frantically trying to dispose of the carcasses of cattle with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow disease", was forced to bury a total of 6,117 out of the 48,819 cases - 12.5 per cent - recorded in those four years.

The reason they were buried is that there were then too few incinerators to destroy them. Those then available were working at full capacity. After 1991, more incinerators came on line.

But this map may have more significance than just recording where the bodies - with their heads but not their equally infected spinal cords removed - were buried. It may also contain clues to the 17 cases recorded so far in Britain of people with the "new variant" of the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Scientists are increasingly confident that the "new variant" CJD is caused by exposure to the BSE agent. What they are not sure of is exactly what form that exposure takes. The most likely form is through eating food made using the brains and spinal cords of BSE-infected cattle. But it could be made more likely if the infectious BSE agent - thought to be a misshapen protein called a "prion" - is present in the water, by leaching from a landfill site into the local water table. It is understood that scientists at the Government's CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh have not yet seen the list of burial sites. But they are also thought not to have found any environmental link between the 17 victims so far. It may be significant, though, that Stephen Churchill, who in May 1995 became the first Briton to die of the "new variant" CJD, lived in Devizes, Wiltshire, just a few miles from the largest of the dumps in Pewsey, where more than 1,000 BSE-infected cattle were buried from 1988 onwards. Other CJD victims grew up near sites which had been used for landfill - though the correlation is weak. Last May, the independent advisory committee on BSE and CJD advised the Government that there was "little risk" that leakage from landfill sites presented any significant risk, and that there was "certainly no justification for taking heroic measures to excavate the sites". However, some members of the advisory committee have said privately that any infectious material in the cattle could infect water supplies. The scientific theories say that once the "prion" reaches the brain, it causes other normally-shaped prion proteins to become misshapen. This in turn leads to the death of the brain cells, causing the "holes" which give the dead brain a spongy appearance. According to this theory, the greater the exposure to disease prions, the more likely somebody is to fall ill. If prions leached from the spine of an infected cow buried in a landfill site, and into the water supply, they might tip a person's intake of prions beyond a particular danger level, and trigger the disease. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Environment Agency said last night that they were carrying out risk assessments of a set of the landfill sites used for the burials. British landfill sites where suspected BSE carcasses were disposed of in 1988-91 SITE COMMENT 1,000-1,200 carcasses Everleigh Tip, Everleigh, Pewsey, Wiltshire Closed 501-999 Stoney Hill Landfill, Horsehay, Telford, Shropshire Closed 401-500 Hill & Moor Landfill Site, Pershore, Hereford & Worcester 201-400 Wardle Landfill Site, Wardle, near Nantwich, Cheshire Closed Arpley Landfill Site, Arpley, Warrington,Cheshire Whites Pit, Arrowsmith Road, Poole, Dorset Closed Attlebridge Landfill Site, Attlebridge, Norfolk Welford Quarry Landfill Site, Welford, Northamptonshire Hirnley Wood Landfill Site, Lower Gornal, Staffordshire 101-200 Jameson Rd Landfill Site, Fleetwood, Lancashire Salt Ayre Landfill Site, Lancaster Winterton Landfill Site, West Haulton, Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire Rock Cottage Landfill, Ripon, North Yorkshire Closed Gamblethorpe Landfill Site, Newsam Green Road, Leeds Closed 51-100 Taddington Landfill Site, Kalton Hill Quarry, Taddington, Derbyshire Closed Crich Landfill Site, Crich, near Matlock, Derbyshire Closed Gainsborough Lea Road, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire Packington Landfill, Little Packington, Meriden, Warwickshire 21-50 Butchersfield Landfill Site, Rixton, Warrington, Cheshire Blooming Heather, Broughton Moor, Cumbria Closed Clifton Marsh, Freckleton, Lancashire Rowley Landfill Site, Queen Park Road, Burnley, Lancashire Lackford Hall Heath, Lackford, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Bramford Landfill Site, Ipswich, Suffolk Closed Ryton Landfill, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire Closed Darrington Quarry, Darrington Leys, Knottingly, North Yorkshire Mickleby Landfill, near Whitby, North Yorkshire 11-20 Stretton Sugwas, Worcester, Hereford and Worcester Closed Whinney Hill, Accrington, Lancashire Kirkby-on Bain, Tattershall Road, Leadenham,Lincolnshire Leadenham Quarry, Porrergate Road, Leadenham South Thoresby, near Alford, Lincolnshire Closed Ingham, Thetford Road, Ingham, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Closed Searner Carr Landfill Site, Searner, North Yorkshire 6-10 Pluckley Landfill Site, Pluckley, Ashford , Kent Closed Kenwick Landfill Site, Kennick Quarry, Louth, Lincolnshire Seghill, Northumberland Barnstone Landfill Site, Works Lane, Lanham, Nottinghamshire Jarvis Landfill Sit, Hawton, Newark, Nottinghamshire Closed Dimmer Landfall Site, Castle Cary, Somerset Closed Wetherden Landfill Site, Stowmarket, Suffolk Acton Landfill Site, Bears Pit, Sudbury, Suffolk Closed Beddington Landfill Site, Lewes, East Sussex 1-5 Nantycaws Refuse Tip, Carmarthen Castletown Tip, Castletown, Thurso, Caithness Middleton Fors, Thurso Holiday Moss, Rainford, Merseyside Morley Greasework Site, Dewsbury Road, Leeds Closed Nettleton, Woods Hill, Nettleton, Lincolnshire Closed Stainby, Crabtree Road, Stainby, Grantham, Lincolnshire Slippery Gowt, Wyberton, Boston, Lincolnshire North Forr, Crieff, Perthshire Closed Bryn Posteg Landfill Site, Llandidloes, Powys Stoneyfield, Invergordon, Ross & Cromarty Burton Farm Landfill Site, Bishopton, Stratford-on-Avon Closed Lower Spen Valley, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire Sugden End Landfill, Crossroads, Keighley, West Yorkshire Shropps Landfill Site, Wheatley, Halifax, West Yorkshire Closed Wilson Road Landfill Site, Lowmoor, Bradford, West Yorkshire Closed

Are You Convinced That This area Is SAFE?

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