DOWN BELOW THE STREETS AND HOUSES,
RATTLECHAIN LAGOON
EVERYONE CAN SEE IT’S GASSING
WE’LL POST A VIDEO SOON
RAT -0-0 –LE -0-0-CHAIN -0-0- PH3 -0-0-PHOSPHINE.
READ PART 4 OF “HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE THE MERE?” OUR ASSESSMENT OF THE HEALTH PROTECTION AGENCIES “HUMAN HEALTH RISK ASSESSMENT HERE.
Poor Langley! What did it ever do to deserve so many chemical factories? A sort of overexercised fat woman’s armpit sticking out of Oldbury with a brew of beetroot and cabbage soup- AND DON’T FORGET THE TOMCAT PISS FROM ALBRIGHT AND WILSON.
You can look back with marvel and wonder at the chemical entrepreneurs and their “achievements” ,but when all is said done and written, what it all really comes down to is the toil of people who gave their blood, sweat and tears for making a very few families a pile of dough, who could then live in splendid isolation away from the industrial filth that made them rich and made their workers die younger than them.
There are some who waffle on about how wonderful industrial heritage is, yet they don’t appear to talk about their fathers dying of cancer, heart attacks and strokes before the age of 60- perhaps they couldn’t see the link before blindly following in their footsteps.
The sons and daughters of Langley played their part, but when you take a look at the area today certainly some of it resembles Damascus on a bad day. Prosperity- where is it? One of the most iconic buildings in the area are the former Langley Maltings, situated adjacent to The Titford Canal and Western Road. There’s some good urban exploration about the history of this site which was largely gutted by fire in September 2009 which can be read HERE.
The “bomb damaged” maltings as viewed from Western Road.
view from the cut
There’s even an old bath in the canal.
Unfortunately this building although iconic is now nothing but an abysmal blot on the landscape, and though Grade II listed, one has to wonder what purpose it serves in its current state. Does the area need a monument to beer making, when under the canal bridges you find pissheads and other such lowlifes blighting the area? If it is not to be restored (again), then it should be demolished before any more of it falls down, or before some bright spark decides on a phoney “restoration” to turn it into another 3 storey apartment block bolt hole for Poles.
The Maltings, attracting flytipping which is a problem that shames the Black Country. In the distance looms the chimney of Rhodia/Solvay.
The dereliction continues onto Station Road with another of those fading institutions, the English public house. This one was called “The bridge” as its last incarnation, but only a structure going to nowhere. The top half has now gone and lies in rubble.
And then Mill Street with its piles of bricks scattered like large lego. Two signs spell “OUT”, but who would ever want to enter there in the first place?
There has been much debate as to who “uncle ben” actually was on this canal bridge named after him- Perhaps Stan Lee might have visited the area once and been inspired to name a character?
On the Titford canal itself you get a few ducks and geese, but knowing from experience, this is one of the worst in Sandwell for vandalism towards birds. The further you go towards Whiteheath, the more council estate scum you will find loitering about. The M5 motorway providing a hangar for illiterate garbage underneath, usually with a rod in one hand and a cannabis joint in the other- and don’t forget to take your dangerous dog fishing with you, to make you look even more like a chav.
“Langley village ” itself is more respectable, but looming over it , the chemical works of Trinity street. “At the heart” of the local community, perhaps in much need of triple bypass surgery.
And a park opened in August 1886 which good old Arthur Albright donated, with another park house clock tower- they did seems to like those in Victorian days didn’t they?
A touching tribute perhaps added when the old fella croaked it in 1900?
Today the parkhouse serves as a community centre, and is home of “The Sandwell Irish Society”. It is highly likely that many from Ireland settled in the area at the prospect of bettering their lives, but at what cost?
A letter from W.B.Albright, his Grandson dated 14th May 1942 to T.N Blockley of the Ministry of Supply concerning labour for the factory states;
“”We have been advised by the labour people that we can obtain 20 men from Ireland in the course of the next two months if we put down £70 for expenses. This we are doing. It seems to me that this is rather buying a pig in the poke, but under the existing circumstances one rather clutches at straws.”
Yes you don’t find such a description in the company biography “100 years of phosphorus making” by R.E Threlfall. What you do find from page 242 onwards is an epitaph on the Oldbury firms centenery “celebrations.”
“On 11 April, 1951, the company gave a dinner at The Savoy hotel, London to over 400 guets. The Rt. Hon. Anthony Eden, P.C, MP, Chancellor of Birmingham University, proposed the health of the company and the cahirman replied. The managing director proposed”The guests”, and replies were made by Sir Wallace Akers of I.C.I, and by Edward O’Neal, of Monsanto Chemicals Limited. From Niagra Falls the company welcomed Walter Wallace, M.B Geiger and Earl Whitford; from Buckingham, Fred J. Hambly and R.Bruce Walker; and from Ireland Norman Goodbody.”
It seems the Langley farmyard was not good enough for them.
As a fairly smallish swan rescue organisation, over the years we have none the less dealt with the full range of usual swan related problems, as well as the unique UK situation of white phosphorus poisoning at Rattlechain lagoon.
There are the usual plethora of angling issues that could have been avoided, powerline strikes, dog attacks, as well as wanton vandalism.
One of the oddist cases in recent times involved a report of a swan that had got “a sandwich bag label” in its mouth. To set the scene, there are several pools in the multi cultural borough of Sandwell, of varying cleanliness and civic pride, and knowing this one, if chappati chucking were an Olympic sport, then there would be considerable local Great British success. Sandwell council likes to boast about the number of Green flags awarded at its sites by Keep Britain Tidy, though you can sometimes wonder if the white stripe, crescent moon and star had been inadvertently missed off the design before being hoisted based on the culinary garnishes at lakeside.
Anyway, the swan. It soon became apparent that “the sandwich bag label” was in fact, a clothing label. Someone somewhere was missing the small fairly useless itch patch off their y fronts or knickers. I was fairly confident that the bird had not swallowed the whole garment! The cotton part of the attachment had been swallowed forming what is called in the wildfowl rescue trade “a chin strap”. This is when a bird swallows fishing line, but sometimes string or nylon and both ends go down the gullet leaving a loop under the chin. This will eventually get tighter and tighter cutting into the mandible to the point where it would ultimately sever the beak off. It would also block the passage of food and birds could die from starvation.
In this case the line had been swallowed leaving the label sticking out under the chin. On catching it, I was able to remove the cotton string which had on the end of it a large glut of weed and food that could not be swallowed. On examining the faded label which gave instruction on how I could have machine washed the hapless creature, I turned the other side and after initially thinking out loud “bloody typical” , could not help sensing some form of amusement from the situation as the bird was released unharmed to carry on with the bargie bonanza on offer that day. “MADE IN BANGLADESH”- Always read the label.
“ABDUL” THE SWAN, AND A FRIEND
“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.
Water water everywhere, and I’m not just talking about rattlechain lagoon. Not surprisingly, the causeway path is now breached in several places.
Didn’t diggers used to pass this way?
Letting it go again- typical Rhodia
And more water via rainfall down Somerset Way flooding the land- or Badger Karma at work perhaps? I can honestly say that this above sea level West Midlander does not have a great deal of sympathy for those southerners who choose to live in splendid rural isolation below sea level, nor see why he should have to contribute to flood defence for an area he would never visit. I wonder how many of them would choose to live in The Black Country if their homes were “bought up” as some of them are calling for the Government to do- why the hell should the rest of the country pay to relocate unsustainable farms and dwellings?
And I see that immensely popular animal welfare lover and Environment Minister old ‘Ow Pat. has put his foot in it again; perhaps he should consider moving the flood defence posts. Dredging the rivers is not the answer, but no doubt it will be for this anti-wildlife party to win a few votes. I suppose rural Somerset would like to see all the toxic dredgings moved to purpose built incinerators in the West Midlands- as far away from their green belts as possible- well why don’t you all go and f**k yourselves.
“Put money in thy purse ‘ow pat.”
“Dats da way ta doit.”
The Environment Agency have come in for some stick in their handling of the Southern floods. I can only say their handling of waste disposal sites is little better. There’s more to learn about their discussions concerning the closure of the rattlechain site as a landfill, but it appears to me to be a rush job, not thought through very well at all. This type of decision making goes on all the time with very little scrutiny, and usually those making the decisions are not there within a few short years, meaning that the accountability trail retires with them.
Another long term regulator that I was never impressed with were British Waterways. Wildlife has always been the poor relation of the canals, as it generates no money. I have touched on the death traps that the canals can be before, but now tha The Canal and Rivers Trust has taken over, its difficult to see whether this charity will put its resources into The South or maintain key routes in the grotty spots of the Midlands.
Take for example the poor response to the embankment collapse near the Coseley Tunnel, which has now completely blocked any passage through it for cyclists and pedestrians. This happened around a year ago, but no sign of any remedial works to resolve the issue, meaning a 20 minute diversion at least to the other side- unless you fancy a swim.
YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
It was of course through this portal that the Alfred Matty boats would have returned to base from their chemical traffic run from Oldbury via rattlechain. The landslip perhaps shows the shit construction of some canal embankments and how they can give way without warning. There seem to be a few of them occuring in recent times, such as the one at Stourbridge a couple of years ago. As this inconvenienced boaters however, it was a little more speedily repaired.
Another gripe about canals management are those useless radar gate barriers, that do not stop motor bikes but do wreck pushbikes.
Bloody useless, bloody radar gates. Get the angle grinder out.
Then there are those towpaths seemingly laid by people of the road for “terty -tree quid” that contain more water than the canals themselves. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse as a towpath user, the CONtractors and the chain gang strim the blackthorn hedges across the bike run, causing mayhem for anyone on two wheels, and sometimes even dogs. Bloody punctures, bloody CRT!
And finally…… a swan rescue tying together the theme of structures and water. Something guided me to look down here yesterday, and it quickly became apparent that it was a stroke of luck.
This is one of those odd canal structures that seem to serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. It is located at the end of Lock 3 on the Factory Locks at Tipton, which joins the new mainline with the old mainline at Factory Road. A sort of overflow waterfall well thingy about 10′ deep.
But not much good if you are a swan that goes over the drop.
“Poor little fella”- help’s on the way
So a call to the RSPCA was in order. I have been down here catching a bird before; a splits effort stradled between the two walls waiting for a wet duck to lift off. It took me a few attempts for the “howz that” moment when it flew into my hands. A swan however is a different prospect altogether. And so after a couple of hours two inspectors attended- I thought it would be a fire brigade job but one of them managed to hook him up. Apparently it was the second time in a week that a swan had been pulled out of there. Thankfully no injuries, a job well done.
Back on safer waters- just stay away from rattlechain
So its been a full year since this website was set up to tell the long saga of Rattlechain lagoon. We said SOLVAYtion isn’t here , and that’s still our view of the situation. We still know very little about the long term future of this site, except that the owners want to change their name and eventually surrender the waste permit at which time it will be offloaded, buried toxic waste and all.
A year ago we were most concerned what effect the proposed dredging operations would have on the wildfowl at the site; and in truth we don’t know what effect it did have. Some 60 resident coot and moorhens have never returned once the waste pipe was removed, and it can’t be seen in other local areas where there has been a sudden increase of those which appearently “left” of their own accord when disturbed.
We don’t know what type of flocculent was used to allegedly solidify the waste material, nor if it were this simple why the owners of the site appeared to be incapable of doing anything previously except putting up helium filled balloons and a few old barrels across the water on their wildlife “safe haven.”
What we do know is the subsidiary lagoon has not been capped or remediated in any way, and seriously if this is something that the regulators are suggesting then maybe they should take a look at this page , which shows how part of the original lagoon was buried to create the current western embankment bordering John’s Lane, which was itself built on top of land previously within the Albright and Wilson site.
Solvay’s human health risk assessment dealt with the current site, not that of the whole site previously used for waste tipping- and we don’t accept many of the conclusions they found anyway and never will- particularly concerning phosphine gas. An assessment of this study will be up soon to explain why.
One old remnant, another to try to erase the sites waste dumping history disappeared over the last couple of weeks. RIP the old pumphouse.
Frame
Now you see it
Now you don’t
Some other development has been the dislocation and beaching of the pontoon pipe which replaced it.
The rattlechain pier, minus the pump
With this in mind and with the heavy rain of the last month, the causeway path is starting to look a little less than it did before, which is obviously quite purposeful on Solvay’s part. That would be “mechanically intevening.”
I should think it will be breached by Monday- more gravel anyone?
Another surprise was the visit of the four musketeers to the site, thankfully briefly.
It’s unusual to see a great deal of wildfowl anymore during the day at the lagoon, and on this point and probably this point only it will be one agreed by Solvay, whatever they say in public but say something else in writing to birdwatchers.
What’s next- who knows- but this blog will continue for the foreseeable future to record events at the site and explain the long backstory behind it.
So Santa Wilson and his toxic sleigh have shuttled off for another year. 2014 and what a soggy start to January! Still it could be worse, it could be snow. In 2010 we had these abysmal conditions which seemed to last for weeks. It was during this period that Rattlechain lagoon formed its own “natural cap” of ice over the surface of the water and the toxic white phosphorus that lay beneath.
It was quite clear however that there were little pockets that didn’t quite freeze, and these were not the plots occupied by a stranded coot or moorhen. It was obviously gas being evolved-phosphine gas.
The majority of birds fled the scene, without a Dutch or Belgian bloke in sight scooting around on the water. Perhaps just briefly this was Nature’s way of sealing off the toxic hell hole that lay beneath and without a penny being spent.
The last open plot
John Edward Wilson 1834-1907. Co founder of Albright and Wilson
On the twelfth day of Christmas Santa Wilson gave to thee…..
Distressed widows weeping,
CANCER- Benzene rings.
pain- phossy jaw,
……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………………………….and a toxic cloud over Langley.
John Edward Wilson 1834-1907. Co founder of Albright and Wilson
On the eleventh day of Christmas Santa Wilson gave to thee…..
Distressed widows weeping,
CANCER- Benzene rings.
pain- phossy jaw,
and a toxic cloud over Langley.
John Edward Wilson 1834-1907. Co founder of Albright and Wilson
On the tenth day of Christmas Santa Wilson gave to thee…..
Distressed widows weeping,
CANCER- Benzene rings.
pain- phossy jaw,
and a toxic cloud over Langley.
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