Waste Recycling Group and the Environment Agency knew exactly what they were taking on when they decided that an old, heavily contaminated artificial hillside was the ideal place to dump the largest pile of rubbish in Europe.
The site was already leaking very high levels of toxic metals (mercury, lead and zinc) and the unknown structure of slag heaps meant that substantial work was needed before construction of the tip was started.
This was not done and the slag heap beneath Welbeck is still contaminating the River Calder – and is now sealed forever beneath the largest tip in Europe.
The Environment Agency seems unwilling or powerless to prevent the tip operators from breaking the laws and if I was more cynical, I would say that they actually just look for the easiest excuse that can be used to justify why the operator has been allowed to continue.
Yes, the tip is now producing record levels of gas, and it is still leaking illegal levels of leachate into the surrounding environment, but both of these were easily predicted and methods of preventing them happening could have been planned for if the company had invested enough cash.
Here's to the future – the next set of problems are just as easy to predict because they have already happened in other tips of much smaller size (and better managed).
The tip will catch fire and will probably burn for months undetected. The fire will destroy the flimsy membranes that are meant to prevent the leachate from escaping, the company will say that they can no longer operate the tip economically and the ratepayers of Wakefield will have a huge bill to pay on top of the disastrous price that our environment is already paying.
When are the citizens of Wakefield going to rise up and stop this monstrosity once and for all?
Phil Waud,
Westfield Street, Ossett