OR MORE APT- BACKWARD IN TWATTERY”.
This former quango is without doubt one of the worst examples of governance in modern history, with the role of waste disposal and pollution prevention being the rotting corpse in a grave that kept on leaking. For much of its existence it was steered by a bloke called Ken Harvey, who I believe was nothing more than a Birmingham bins bloke foreman who suddenly found himself elevated to the souped-up role of “county waste disposal officer”, a role for which he was an absolute fucking failure and disaster, and architect of things that are still left over today from 40+ years ago. Of course the bunch of greasing turds in charge as c”o”unty councillors at this time are also culpable for passing waste disposal licences such as SL31 and their weak wording which allowed scum like Albright and Wilson to carry on polluting with little implications on them.
Their doomwatch sites, I have listed from these dark days of Harvey’s failure to control pollution , as well as showing how incompetent his officers were in that they could not even identify a location where 250,000 gallons of sulphuric acid had been dumped, after those who had done the crime had been prosecuted!
As well as the failure of licensing, it is clear that Harvey’s idiots were not even competent chemists or scientists, which would have come in quite handy in tackling and challenging deceitful liars like AW about their waste disposal activities.
Harvey and co passed a licence which allowed AW to dispose of one of the most toxic substances handled in the region, (white phosphorus), into an urban watery lagoon, on the basis that it would be “safe” to let it oxidise in “small quantities”– as we know, hundreds of tonnes of it actually FFS!
What an absolute crock of shit! The process was neither “safe” and the amounts were not “small”. Albright and Wilson liars of the chemical industry.
Not only was the plant in which this cargo came from not competent in stopping pollution over decades harming people and the environment, but its dump was already known as a notorious hell in the middle of Dudley Port that was “a peril to children”.
When road tanker operation took over from canal barge, it was clear that the operation was still not safe, when material deposited at rattlechain was allowed to burn out. I looked at how a tanker carrying waste to rattlechain, including drums of toxic material had caught fire on route there from Trinity Street.
This was from The May 16th 1976 edition of the Sandwell Evening Mail and therefore before the SL31 licence had been passed in 1978. You would have hoped that incidents such as this would have informed those passing the licence, or refusing to allow it to continue- well at least any reasonable person would. 🙄
“An official enquiry has been launched into the incident in which highly combustible phosphorus waste caught fire in Oldbury while being transported by open lorry to a tip.
A full scale police and fire brigade alert was started when a 40 gallon drum containing the waste burst into flames. It was being driven through Oldbury to a Tividale tip from the Langley works of chemical manufacturers Albright and Wilson Ltd.
Mr Ken Harvey the county council’s waste disposal officer said “I would not consider this a satisfactory method of transporting such materials.
I am aware of the Albright and Wilson waste tipping operations but I am not aware that waste is being handled in this manner.
We intend to pursue this matter through discussions with the company because after this incident one must accept that present transportation arrangements are not entirely satisfactory.”
I discussed the paradox as to how Harvey could claim that the practice of transporting this waste was “not satisfactory” , yet allowing it to continue under his watch under a licence bearing his own name just months later.
What I have recently found through another article, is that Harvey’s claims and “enquiry” were absolutely nothing of the sort, and that any discussion with AW must have involved either brown envelopes of cash to look the other way , a freemason handshake, or ignoring any safety implications of continuing this operation, as it clearly did continue.
The 11th June 1976 Birmingham Mail is a shocking indictment of Harvey’s incompetence in his job, and that of the entire regulator. In less than one month, this white wash lie concluded that the firm were not to blame for the incident, of course clearing Harvey’s own useless organisation of any wrong doing themselves, in that they were quite happy for AW to have been doing this to start with.
What is more bizarre is that it recommended that the lorries should no longer be single crewed, rather than the highly flammable cargo being unsuitable to be carried through residential streets! I mean what the actual fuck are they talking about here?
Thirteen drums of p4 containing waste had left the site heading for rattlechain, when one caught fire- thus all them would have eventually.
“A spokesman said that Albright and Wilson were transporting this cargo with authority”.
Yes of course, ultimately the ass clown Ken Harvey’s authority.
Even more incredible is that the berk at WMCC, probably this lazy thick hopper tipper twat himself, claims that they did not know how the incident started. FFS! P4 catches fire when exposed to air, it really is that simple!
There is also the absolute lie from the driver and AW that there was “a burst tyre”. This for me is typical of this company and their red herring bullshit which attempts to switch blame onto anything but the chemicals they fail to handle safely. I mean if a tyre had “burst”, how would the driver have been able to tour the area looking for somewhere to park when knowing that one of the drums was on fire behind him? He would have lost control of the vehicle and probably crashed. Did that happen; I think not? I also wonder as to whether the driver was pressured into making this fake claim to keep his job, nothing would surprise me at all with the management of this shameful operator.
Another provable lie is that AW steered clear of residential areas. THEY DID NOT! They were still using the same route described in the SEM article in the 2000’s !
The map below from the period shows both the former toxic trail by canal barge compared to the toxic trail by road. There may have been some variations of this route from Trinity Street via Shidas lane/Lower City Road for example, but I stalked these bastards along the route at the time in the 2000’s between loads, so I know what I am talking about.
Albright and Wilson’s Toxic trails, from factory to tip– blue the canal route, red the road route.
I am not sure how two men could have done anything differently than one, and it is clear that one man in a tanker continued to dump the waste all those years later when I first came across the scene in the 1990’s. WHAT IS CLEAR IS THAT ANY ONE MAN COULD HAVE DONE A BETTER JOB THAN KEN HARVEY DID, AND THAT THE OLD BOYS NETWORK OF MILITARY PAST DEEDS/CIVIL SERVICE BACK SCRATCHING FROM AW CONTINUED TO GIVE THEM SPECIAL PASSES TO DO WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANTED TO WITH AN APPARENT DIPLOMATIC INDUSTRIAL IMMUNITY.
WMCC could not detect a white phosphorus fire if it came up and lit them up the arse.