The obscurity of the location of Rattlechain lagoon was always part of the problem. Set in a post war era as part of a “tipping area” with very few houses around, it may well have made it a “suitable” location at that time. But then some planning berks decided to create an estate off The Dudley Road, and so this has continued to expand on former agricultural land.
Panoramic view from 1950 showing Rose Lane marked in red. To the left The Rattlechain brickworks and Rattlechain lagoon, the Tividale sewage works, and bottom left, The Vono Lagoon.
The most noticeable feature of the site for many years was the long discharge pipe jutting out into the centre of the lake. When i first laid eyes on it many years ago, the first thing that i thought of was the fabled “Iraqui super gun”.
I just wonder of the same Sheffield manufacturers made both?
Tanker discharging waste into lagoon in 2001
The method of disposal and “site procedures” , as stated by the site operators can be read HERE, and note the commentary on this as most of their tale was a deception then, as it remains now with regards to what they were actually doing. (And see photograph from 1994 at the bottom of this post which demonstrates this point).
Before the demise of this turquoise metal structure, which ironically attracted birds to the site, I took this video as an archive reminder of its existence for posterity. It can be viewed on the facebook page for this website below.
Despite attempting to remove their apparatus from the site in 2013 as part of the cover up works which I looked at HERE , Rhodia/Solvay have never removed the toxic legacy of what lies beneath and what was discharged from it.
A second video from Christmas 2009 shows the effects of this said operation and what happens when wildfowl are poisoned by waste such as that being disposed of in this site. As stated before, it was never “safe”, and it was never a “small amount” that was dumped there.
I have recently stumbled across a rather important picture in the public domain dated from 1994. It shows the position of what was occurring at the site at this time, with a tanker set up in the so called “beach area”. The large pipe in the centre of the shot is there, but not apparently being used.
In the background we see evidence of the abysmal foundry sand so called “reclamation” going on which caused “misery” for many years to local residents of the Temple Way Estate. Of course this would also illicit the removal of the former Tividale Sewage works for housing, which was granted on appeal in 2004.
This tale of two tips is important to knowing their entirely separate histories, and their total incompatibility with filling a large watery hole with a great mound of sand.
I would also add that whatever the tanker driver was doing in this picture, and you can clearly see that liquid waste is being discharged from a hosepipe, AND NOT CONNECTED TO ANY PIPE, it does not match what is described in the rattlechain site procedures, and I cannot offer any explanation or defence as to what was going on here.
We know historically that one driver had “used their initiative” and unloaded barrels which caught fire when this method was still being applied in 1989– in this very same area. Perhaps this was another example , but what effect would this have had on leaving said waste above the water level, and likely to dry out, let alone be ingested by dabbling wildfowl?
Toxic Lagoon And Tip. Photograph by Robert Brook/science Photo Library (fineartamerica.com)
The camera does not lie. Only some site operators views of history do.
Toxic Lagoon And Tip. Photograph by Robert Brook/science Photo Library (fineartamerica.com)