THE non-proscecution of Welbeck toxic tip management for releasing the equivalent of 868 car miles of CO2 gas into the atmosphere in 2007, and a new proposed date of 2009 before a gas utilisation plant can be built at Welbeck – thus allowing enough gas to power 8,000 homes to be simply flared into our environment – is not just a local or national issue but an international scandal.
In 2000, I was given two lifetime injunctions, with costs of £3,000, for attempting to inform the people of Wakefield of the content of Wakefield Council's Welbeck tip lease.
I also tried to inform people that the dates of 2003, 2005 and 2007 for
the building of a gas utilisation plant were a lie.
I was condemned by both the officers of the council and the Environment Agency.
I was jailed at the request of Wakefield Council's planning department for peacefully protesting on this issue in 2003, while the Environment Agency, Welbeck Waste Management Ltd and Wakefield Council stated I was a scaremonger and a liar and it would be the economics of the madhouse not to build a gas utilisation plant before 2007.
To date, despite fly infestation, illegal meat dumping, stench, waste (including nickel deposits and diesel oil) polluting the River Calder, and the refusal to build a gas utilisation plant as per the site lease, licence and planning permission, the only person to be jailed, have injunctions placed on them, and thousands of pounds of court costs has been myself, simply for informing the public of the facts.
This year, under the Freedom of Information Act, I was able to prove the council has lost the ratepayers of Wakefield a vast amount of income.
Welbeck's management refuse to remove their injunctions, the Environment Agency has given a further extension to burn gas into the atmosphere, and the council refuses to take legal action over breaches of the Welbeck site lease.
So the economics of the madhouse have come to pass! Gas emissions still enter the atmosphere, but even when a gas utilisation plant is eventually put in place, it is to be a second-hand system brought in from other sites, not a 'state-of-the-art' facility, as promised.
The council is still losing thousands of pounds of revenue. Ministers, councillors and officers still say things are getting better, and maybe in the new method of cell construction at the site they are, but despite evidence to the contrary on everything else, not one of the establishments mentioned above has ever been found negligent in respect of monitoring and enforcement at the site.
Paul Dainton, president of Residents Against Toxic Scheme (RATS),
Altofts Lodge Drive, Altofts
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