“THEY’RE BAAA-AAACK.”
Yes, the Belgian boys are back in Oldbury town, or at least they were for a few days this week- their mission – and they chose to accept it- to dump some aluminium sulphate into the supposed “clean side” lagoon as Rhodia and their regulator The Environment Agency liked to call it back in the day. Obviously no one at Rhodia wants to be seen to be dumping anything into the site- so get a contractor to do it for you.
All this- we are supposed to believe- and we obviously do not because what this company say at face value is worthless, is that the ph level in this pool alone (not the larger one that they were messing about with last year to cover up their mess) is now above the level accepted by the EA for discharge to The Birmingham Canal. But hang on a mo- how did this suddenly happen? With ph7 neutral, ph 10 was the consent limit set in the discharge consent.
And so our intrepid heros- (including my favourite Heyrman with the glasses) were tasked with “bath salt dumping.” I was half expecting Robert Tyler or even Monsieur Clamadieu to turn up for a quick dip, just to show that the pool was now “safe” ,but perhaps the weather was a bit too cold. But it was quite apparent, even reading safety data sheets on Aluminium sulphate that this chemical “used in water treatment works” is certainly not at all “safe”. Though they may claim to have monitored the aluminium levels this is just another example of adding a chemical to try to disguise or remove another one. And obviously, the Heyrman guneia pigs knew this and had been told.
If these were action figures they would be “Heyrman De Roeck operative (fluorescent Gimp disguise outfit)”
Gentlemen, start your engines
The water was extremely choppy, and a quick inspection led to another unforseen problem.
hat overboard
Not put back on head- I wonder why ?
Aluminium sulphate was previously used in the removal of white phosphorus and other heavy metal contaminants in trials conducted in World war two. We have looked at this previously HERE.
This smaller subsidiary lagoon was never decontaminated during the 2013 works, not capped (without any plausible explanation given as to why not), and is now undisputedly known to have been created out of the original fully contaminated and pre-licensed tip. So of course, it is still contaminated.
The pallet of chemicals also seemed to contain more than just aluminium sulphate however.
Iron iii oxide?
It was looking like the pools would be reunited again, but obviously the contrived chemical cosh obviously allowed discharge to the canal to resume.
Several documents were released last week by the environment agency concerning the closure of the site, but it seems that the majority of the licence conditions remain. 3_6_Rhodia Limited Permit
We will look at these shortly. If you have a complaint to make about the way in which decisions are made at your local hazardous waste site, then don’t bother to contact The National Environment agency team, who are obviously far too busy and too important to answer questions from plebs. I wonder if they also think that phosphine is “marsh gas” and that white phosphorus isn’t toxic? The hurried rush job to formerly close this site under the pretense that it had something to do with poisoning wildfowl that both regulator and regulated were unified in dismissing with contempt shows that there are many people in their employ who have hindsight but never foresight.
The environment agency- Allowing toxic chemicals to be dumped in the environment, and it seems like they are creating only a bitter place.