It was recently revealed that the undefined area known as “the black country” is to receive its own “Garden City.”
“This Garden City vision will utilise existing green, cultural and economic assets to develop attractive places where people want to live, transforming the reality and perception of the Black Country. “
Or so the unelected “Black country Local Enterprise partnership” spout in their glossy literature and video. The truth of course is a different story, and this is not the first time that this sort of tripe has been touted. The Black Country Development Corporation ran along similar lines, whereby it had the power, though never the people backed mandate to compulsory purchase vast areas of so called “brownfield” land. The whole area around Rattlechain lagoon, as well as the lagoon itself was part of this strategy, but it never materialised despite attempts to try and reinvent the area- at one point as “the black country quays”. The big stumbling block- the lagoon and its toxic contents, which at this time Albright and Wilson were still trying to promote as being “vital” to their site operations as a waste disposal site.
Sunken ship
The planning applications surrounding this and reports are vast, but I have read them all and will over the course of time be adding them to this website as a lasting record, a record so that no local residents in the area will be fooled as to what has gone before. The secretive meetings not attended by any local residents, statements made by none residents of the area employed by the BCDC , and plans drawn up by people attempting to make “a mint” from indiscriminate dumping are well worth seeing, and are the footprint of what will not be allowed to happen again.
The plans submitted in the “garden city” are a virtual reboot. I have annotated the diagram proposed for “Dudley Port” below with red crosses.
x denotes contaminated land.
The entire current autobase site, much of it within the former rattlechain contaminated site appears to be the principle “quality home” setting. On the Western side we have the overtipped former rattlechain brickworks site, itself containing the remnants of the new pit which was abandoned and filled with all kinds of uncharacterised shite from local industry for over several decades. The token green space within this denotes the location of this former pit. No doubt with the manner in which developers operate they will at some point attempt to amend these plans to cram in a few more houses on here just to milk the demand for housing quotas even more.
I have now released the second part of the planning history of this adjoining site up to the 1970’s when the brickworks went out of commission altogether.
Let’s be quite clear here, this will not create new jobs for industry. Sandwell Council recently appear to have changed track with The Vaughn trading estate which was earmarked for housing some time ago. It now appears that this will now become a hub for industry. Obviously the trade off will be to compulsory purchase the autobase site and relocate all the businesses on here just a hundred meters across the Netherton Branch canal. This is not therefore going to create new jobs, just relocate existing ones. I’m not sure what the likes of Barrett steel, Rhys Davies logistics or even Diamond busses who have recently just invested in a new site in this location will make of this, but no doubt significant portions of public money doled out by the unelected BCLEP will be used as a sweet persuader.
THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE, AS IS ALLOWING GRANTS TO BE GIVEN OUT TO LANDBANKERS WHO HAVE THROUGH THEIR OWN DELIBERATE RECALCITRANCE FAILED TO CLEAR UP SITES BUT HAVE SAT ON ANOTHER QUANGO BEING CREATED TO FACILITATE ANOTHER “SHOVEL READY” SCHEME.
The nearby Sheepwash Local Nature Reserve, undervalued by the local council for years, and overpopulated by increasing numbers of anti social slime who have settled in the area will only suffer, most evidently by pollution from every source of this disastrous scheme. I have seen it before in other places, and with The Environment Agency and Severn Trent totally unable to even trace the source of industrial pollution into the River Tame via the sewer network, it is quite clear to see where this pollution source will migrate , whatever the claims of stopping this from happening, to which the agency are totally lacking in being able to prevent.
The lack of transparency and hiding of historic information only serve to facilitate these greedy developer schemes, backed up by the institutionally corrupt “environmental consultant” industry (a.k.a the development facilitator industry).
But the BCLEP and all the other suited money grabbing twats clambering over diagrams such as this should heed a recent case concerning contaminated land and Walsall council.
A former gas works in Willenhall was transferred into the Stonegate housing estate. The ruling by the Secretary of State to quash the council’s remediation notice means that Walsall council taxpayers are now potentially going to have to pay for the clean up of the land and not the company who developed the land. Does this case make it likely or less likely that local authorities will designate land as “contaminated” when they are likely to have to foot the bill for remediation?
The main chemical of concern to this council is one which is now massively widespread and will continue to thwart the developer conmen unless the pollutant linkages are of course covered up, by their “environmental consultants.”
Benzo (a ) pyrene is a known carcinogen and WMBC give a good assessment of the pollutant linkage pathways which could cause significant harm.
Soil derived dusts are by far the most likely pathway identified.
With reference to Albright and Wilson related activities we do have buried figures of benzo (a) pyrene detected in their former chemical arm.
I asked an FOI request about this study and contaminants. This was particularly relevant as this study recommended removal of the material to an offsite source. The timeline of what happened to this appears to have become rather hazy between Rhodia and the EA, but none the less confirms what was being dumped into Rattlechain lagoon before licensing as it came from this direct source.
Of benzo (a pyrene) it was noted
“The presence of benzo (a) pyrene, a proven carcinogen, to the total PAH levels is significant, and reported levels in the sediments similar to those reported for US crude oils. Since oil is likely to constitute more than 1.5% of the sediment weight, the level of benzo (a) pyrene in this component appears to be in the range of 80-140 mg/kg. “
NB this figure is significantly above the safe levels of this compound.
We recorded the unacceptable soil derived dust which would have included dredged sediment material being generated at the rattlechain site during the so called “clean up” works at the time.
THE PAID FOR HPA STUDY DID NOT BOTHER ANALYSING FOR BENZO (A) PYRENE IN THE LAGOON SEDIMENT, ALONG WITH MANY OTHER CHEMICALS LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN THERE.
Given that much of what went wrong in the Dudley port area occurred in the let’s dump as much shit as we can as fast as we can before new laws come in 1970’s, the omens are not very good.
Unfortunately the West Midlands County Council, and largely the utterly useless Walsall Council Hazardous Waste Unit oversaw the licensing of the sites, and now as before we appear to be regressing towards the West Midlands Combined Authority, an unelected bureaucracy. As part of this we are to get a mayor, a position that was also not elected by the choice of the people but by the clamour of politicians and their business chums wanting to get their hands on large amounts of central Government money.
The two likely candidates to fill this role, who do not even live in the area, for the Conservatives, ex John Lewis boss Andy Street, and ex Labour politician Sion Simon do not appear distinguishable in their ideas for house building.
Street wants to protect the so called “green belt” by cramming in more housing to diminish peoples quality of lives in urban areas. Simple Simon wants to do broadly the same- so why should anyone in these areas vote for this? Oldbury and Tipton may as well be merged if the green wedge between the two are soiled with more housing to form the new “OLDTIP”- which would actually be a good description of what occurred in both. Furthermore, talk of outside influences from London shaping local agendas are thrown out of the window with the idea that The black country is now a part of “Greater Birmingham”. This term was even touted at a seminar held in The South of France to sell this preposterous Garden city idea.
It isn’t the area they want to change , it is the name and identity of the area altogether. What difference does it make if those with the purse strings are in Birmingham instead of London? But you can stick as much lipstick on a pig as you want, it’s what’s underneath that defines it.