I am still trying to make a case that having a major industrial development on the most sensitive part of our underground reservoir is just plain stupid.
I am still waiting for replies from TDC and the environment agency related to the Sericol spillage.
My main point is that dense industrial estates have pollution incidents so should be nowhere near the water abstraction boreholes.
Click here for the pollution map of Thanet it’s an edifying experience and shows pretty clearly what I mean.
News, Local history and Thanet issues from Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate see www.michaelsbookshop.com I publish over 200 books about the history of this area click here to look at them.
Keep up your good work Michael.
ReplyDeleteIs it my eyesight or is that a radioactive incident smack in the middle of Thanet ?
As you know I have FOI requests to TDC re Thor and the incidents in which TDC yielded lead agency to govt depts.
And I have a request with Environment Agency to investigate the Pfizer development and establish if it is the case that the development site pipe and vessel welds failed to meet contractual standards.
I have received an Ombudsman acknowledgement to my request to mediate to expedite Kent Police Authority response re complaint against Cllr Hayton. How much did he know about Sericol when he was allagedly giving evidence for tory Cllr Maison, alleged bogus engineer who conned work at Sericol for ten years, in 1998.
I am waiting for more information re Anthrax burials at the former Haine isolation hospital before sending TDC an FOI application on that.
How long is it now since anyone called you a scaremonger or suggested that public servants should be left alone to do their job ?
Do they think we cheated by putting facts into the argument ? 470 tonnes of fact being a substantial opening jab ?
Rick, that's QEQM Hospital. Radiation used in X Rays, cancer treatment type of thing.
ReplyDeleteThat is ionizing radiation isn't it ? That should not create an ongoing hazard classification I think. I will have to check it out.
ReplyDeleteMiddlesex Hospital did get the algae mutation in linear accelerator cooling water that has been also associated with the 3 Mile Island incident.
Rick. Why would Southern Water be releasing arsenic and mercury into the river at North Foreland?
ReplyDeleteRe QEQM
ReplyDeleteIt is not a triangle for significant incident there. So perhaps it is for the handling of radioactive sources in the cobalt type machines for treating cancer.
And anon has a good point.
Mercury is the stuff which across the world Thor has a poor record of keeping from the area water courses.
Must wait for TDC to reply to FOI requests before leaping to conclusions.
re Foreland as a complete aside You do know that in 1973 there were men from govt doing a survey about a 600 metre pipeline going out to sea near there. As far as I recall this was a viability survey for possible diversionary use to bring oil ashore from rigs, by shallow draught tanker, if enemy or terrorist action compromised the North Sea oil piping arrangements. I thought the plan was for the Water Authority installations at Manston and a pipeline running across from Haine etc would all be dual design.
I do remember a civil servant at DHSS Broadstairs going very pale when he first met a notorious Thanet benefits fiddler. The civil servant had previously been with MOD at Manston. He said to me "Gulp, the last time I saw that man he was dressed as a very senior RAF officer and we gave him copies of loads of plans held at Manston". Better keep quiet about that one then he thought. And our notorious figure one day decided to get employ (to everyone's surprise) and got a management job at one of Thanet's well known employers. In charge of purchasing .... never far from the money that consummate alleged con man.
But the strategic survey also looked at designing a low level oil refinery and a large acreage two storey NHS hospital. None of which happened. So I imagine the feasibility study decided that it was not feasible. But I do recall that the survey found that Ramsgate could viably be made centre of a larger harbour than Aden. And dredging would not be an ongoing requirement.
With the radioactive discharge from the QEQM this would be material that would have a very short half-life so would decay to harmless fairly rapidly from a radioactive point of view, not so sure harmless from a heavy metal point of view though.
ReplyDeleteI don’t understand how Anthony Jenkins Fuel Oil Limited at Manston can be licensed to discharge chromium and lead into the ground water though, I know that Southern Water would have to extract it from our drinking water but the unregulated agricultural boreholes in the area make one a little uneasy about this.
Rick,
ReplyDeleteI think it was about 1990 when small mercury droplets were found at Foreness Point in the rock pools. The exact location was from the base of the slipway at Friends Gaps then in a rough line about 100 metres due west.The area is normally sand, but in the winter the sand is often stripped leaving white chalk rock pools. The droplets often cling to fragments of non ferrous metal giving a chrome plate effect.The area was used by the military during WW2 and that is beleived to be the source.The quantities are extremely small and we are talking pin heads. As mercury is on the red list the find must be on record but the quantities are small. It was me who made the discovery.
It seems that a large can of worms has been opened up. CG is going to have to answer these concerns or public opinion might truly go against them.
ReplyDeleteI was told that the time to voting from now was a very very long time in politics and everyone will have forgotten by then. I'm not so sure now.
I know about Thor but have you picked up on Incident Number 134766 (Brown Triangle close to Ramsgate Railway Stn.) It was classified as SIGNIFICANT and involved Organic chemicals/products affecting LAND. No mention was made of water though and yet we all know that spillage on Thanet finds its way into the aquifer under the whole Isle! What was the incident there dated 4 Feb 2003? Would you be able to find out from the EA?
ReplyDeleteI know that my brother used to give the skies of Thanet a fair old dowsing of aviation fuel when he diverted to Manston (Victor Tankers shedding load for emergency diversion) !! Then he would turn up bold as brass at our aunt's hotel in Cliftonville
ReplyDelete"Hope no one's smoking" !
In 1985 I did a course, on maintaining linear accelerators, at David Salomons House. It was there that technicians from the Middlesex Hospital revealed to Phillips Mullard that they had an algae in the linac water system which could not be killed by known biocide. I was an engineer not a physicist so cannot comment on the physics.
Rob Green (nephew of the murdered anti Sizewell activist Hilda Murrell) was told this Middlesex information by me in the early 90s when we were discussing my condemnation of the electrical system at Plessey Torpedos Newport.
As far as I know Rob Green (who is into a bit of nuclear watch) got a Professor of Chemistry to look at the Middlesex case. As far as I recall Rob told me that after the Three Mile Island incident this sort of mutation (which was previously theorized as impossible) was flushed to environment. It is not my subject so I pass on what I recall.
I recall that Rob told me that was one of the reasons why USA physicists were anxious to look at Chernobyl.
On Chernobyl the more recent and now official reports do not cite backup power failure.
But weigh up the chances that a whole team of research electrical engineers had carried out a massive preparatory exercise to test residual generation. And that in so doing they did not alter the backup genny switching so that the backups would be running all the time of the research and in an instant be switched in if the residual generated emergency shut down power faltered.
The idea that they set up this experiment with no parallel running fail safe is ludicrous.
The backups failed when they were switched on load.
In this country, as I understand it, we get about four hours before criticality after emergency shut down. And Hunterston B in 98 came close. Their emergency backup gennies failed. If power had not been restored to grid (so they could derive power from the grid to power their coolant circulation whilst they remained on shut down) then we would have had Chernobyl. That is how important back up gennies are.
And there are many Thanet men who have knowledge of a man who nobbles gennies. And they still keeping quiet. Just like the Sericol workforce who kept quiet whilst the aquifer was being contaminated eh ?
The sort of Thanet man who might say all the ills of the world are due to immigrants and dole scroungers. Specks and planks.
Just a peripheral thought - in these times of inflated fuel prices how many blaggers may be nicking diesel etc from poorly secured storage tanks then scarpering without turning the taps off? I bet a few thousand litres could run into the groundwater in the course of a night. I hear the EA is launching a campaign to tighten up on this sort of thing.
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