The notorious Rattlechain lagoon , a local hazardous waste dump with a very murky secret has at last gone national!
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The ENDS report is a brilliant publication and can be subscribed to HERE.
I must thank Danny Halpin, a keen young investigative journalist for his time and effort in uncovering a large body of information that many authorities would like to remain buried- particularly the construction industry and those crowing for the “brownfield first” building agenda.
The article references some of the struggles that I had, particularly early on in attempting to find out why many birds were dying on this lake, which would go on to be accurately described as “a lake of death”.
I bore direct witness to the suffering of birds who were unfortunate enough to land on this backwater dump, surrounded by canals and adjacent to a nature reserve, and nothing but obstacles were put in my way by multiple Governmental agencies in attempting to find out the real cause of death.
This was of course , white phosphorus, (P4), a banned rat poison, which perversely, was still allowed to be dumped at sites like this in considerable amounts. This had happened for years, despite even in the 1950’s local authorities knowing that it was “a peril to children”, but still it continued, and then became even worse sanctioned by a paperweight waste disposal licence that was not worth the paper it was printed on.
The idea that this highly toxic and poisonous waste could be dumped in the open air was flawed to start with, and those who considered it “safe” to do so, as the waste management application suggested should have been made to ingest it, along with the fools who believed the “science” of these reckless fraudulent liars operating out of Oldbury.
When applying for a waste disposal licence to The West Midlands county council in 1978, Albright and Wilson had the audacity to make false claims about the “safe” disposal of “small quantities” of this dangerous banned rat poison by claiming that “natural oxidation” would deal with it.
The process was neither “safe” and the amounts were not “small”. Albright and Wilson liars of the chemical industry. 40 years on, it’s still there.
In the ENDS article, Rhodia/Solvay still cling to the deception of percentages of the total waste, but this was dismissed when I asked the EA for the records of how much waste had been deposited since licensing, which can be read here. These quantities do not include the many tonnes of waste dumped for the 30 preceding years before this, when this company were also a Ministry of Supply phosphorus munitions producer in WW2 making the stuff that unleashed a firestorm on Dresden and Hamburg. The wastes of war had to go somewhere, and a satellite waste dump down the road was the answer.
Rhodia also made statements to another national newspaper journalist some time ago, admitting that there were “tens of tonnes” of white phosphorus buried within the waste- when you look at it like that, the 0.1% they claim is perhaps put into a better context and not the disingenuous bunkum that they are trying to peddle.
Milligram quantities are enough to poison people, as well as the unfortunate birds that I myself pulled from the water on several occasions.
It is quite apparent however from Danny’s investigation via ENDS that Rattlechain lagoon is one of many sites that have been forgotten like this around the UK, or perhaps deliberately buried for corporate benefit, and secured by industrial friendly politicians who even in the past have been known to be paid “policy advisors” for such.
The case of young Zane Gbangbola and his Dad’s efforts to uncover the wall of silence and denials is one that I too recognise, and I am sure that there are many other environmental campaigners across the country, and throughout the world who have also been side lined by corporate denial and Governmental ignorance in the same way. Read about the family’s story HERE on their website, I firmly believe after looking into this that a perverse injustice has been served here, and I wish them well in uncovering a truth that I believe will one day be admitted.
You have to wonder with all of the joined up denials and attempts to silence by those in local Government and national agencies to whom these civil “servants” serve ?
The What’s in your backyard EA website, and the manner in which it was removed from public view, I have looked at in This FoI request. What it was replaced with, and the amount of info that has now been obscured with is really not worth bothering with, as the ENDS article suggests.
The quote from Professor Andrew Watterson is again something which I recognise fully. This applies to the sites around rattlechain lagoon where housing has been progressively developed over the years, leaving the watery toxic waste hole in situ without dealing with it first, and by that I don’t mean filling it in.
I will be going into painstaking detail about this no doubt in the coming months to years, and have already prepared multiple pages and posts after unearthing vast quantities of desk buried information from various sources. Developers may be increasingly finding it easy to build on such sites through manipulation of the planning process, but I promise them the mother of all battles with them attempting to pull the wool over people’s eyes as to the historic legacy buried at these “shovel ready” sites.