What are you drinking, the water or the wave? A review of drinking water pollution in Thanet

First, DON’T PANIC, make sure you are carrying your towel, engineering hat on for a mo. Before you read any of this stuff be assured that apart from swimming in the sea in Thanet after heavy rain, you aren’t likely to be drinking high concentrations of raw sewage, weedkiller and other nasties.

The environment Agency started to produce a leaflet groundwater quality in Thanet, if this is available on their website then I can’t find it, but I have managed to get hold of the first three of these leaflets covering the period from October 2009 to June 2010.

Thanet sits on its own drinking water reservoir, the chalk under Thanet acts like a big sponge and anything liquid that falls on the ground is soaked up and since pre history there have been wells dug into this chalk sponge, water drawn from these wells has been drunk by the people of Thanet.

The chalk filters some of the nasties out, some get through with the water and some parts of this underground reservoir have been so badly damaged by toxic chemical spills that the only thing to do is to keep pumping contaminated water from wells around the spill, so that it doesn’t spread to other parts of the chalk.

If you look at the rather splodgy map above you will see it has red bits on it, the red circles show the area around the drinking water pumping stations, and wiggly sausage like lines extending from these are “adits” underground tunnels for water leading to the pumping stations.

There are quite tight controls about what you can pour into the ground over the red bits, hence all the fuss over China Gateway, where the firm involved intended to let out lots of industrial units with their own septic tanks, draining into the red bit.

The green bits are not so sensitive, if you get caught short in the country, but not really a good place to throw away the contents of the bottle at the back of the shed with the skull and crossbones on it.

The blue bits are even less sensitive, but what goes in there will probably eventually come out.

Issue one says that the EA have helped get £30m to mend our Victorian sewers and redirect sewage pipes that lead directly to the chalk and lots over other reassuring things see http://www.thanetonline.com/gwqn/

I am assuming that having boiled your water or whatever you are now ready for issue two, this tells us among other things that the environmentally conscious Thanet Earth wanted to pour their effluent into the drinking water, but that after discussions with the EA has now got permission to build a sewage pipe. It’s a bit vague about where the effluent is going at the moment, perhaps they are crossing their legs, see http://www.thanetonline.com/gwqn/id3.htm

Issue three interestingly enough doesn’t contain the interesting page 4 “Site Specific Updates” that I read with interest in issues one and two, possibly nothing of note occurred at specific sites in Thanet during that period. Here is the link to issue three http://www.thanetonline.com/gwqn/id4.htm

Something nasty in the water

Any of you unfamiliar with the pollution of Thanet’s drinking water aquifer with the toxic chemical Cyclohexanone may wish to click here for my previous postings on the subject.

The problem with this and other pollution incidents here in Thanet is that because it was only discovered after it had been happening for many years it is difficult to ascertain if any toxic chemicals got into the drinking water supply or the water used for crop washing and irrigation.

There was a rumour some time ago that some of the professionals in the health service suspected that that some of the medical statistics in Thanet suggested that they could have done.

Richard Card was concerned about this and contacted the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate about this, they passed his letter about this to The Kent Health Protection Unit at Maidstone.

The director of the unit has now written to Richard Card saying that the matter will be investigated fully and the matter is being take seriously.

Another significant chemical pollution incident

Chemical pollution at Thor chemicals in Thanet this time and once again it’s soaked down into the ground water.

It is not my intention to scaremonger here, but to add to my reasons why we should be considering our underground drinking water reservoir much more seriously, when planning future local development and expansion of existing enterprises.

Once again I am stressing that spillages and leaks into the ground are something that happens in industry, I know because I worked in industry.

Our underground drinking water reservoir is an essential local resource with out which we could not supply sufficient water to people’s homes, agriculture and industry.

The chalk under Thanet acts like a huge sponge where our water is collected and stored and bits of this sponge now has areas of poisoned water in it, the cumulate effect of the various poisoned areas will undoubtedly cause expense and problems for generations to come.

The proposed China Gateway development is a huge and very densely designed industrial estate, right in the middle of this reservoir very close to where our drinking water is pumped out of the ground.

Manston airport is also on top of the sensitive part of this reservoir, and if it is expanded so that there are a great many flights of very large planes, then it is probable that sooner or later there will be an air accident involving a large spillage of fuel or chemical cargo on the grassed part of the airport, which will soak into the ground.

Now while I am confident that Thanet District Council’s contaminated land team them are making sterling efforts to discover and cleanup previous and present pollution incidents, I think it is just plain stupid to take unnecessary risks with the water supply by carrying out perilous activities in the middle of the reservoir.

Rick has obtained some details about the Thor pollution click here to read

click here for the main post about the Sericol leak

Click here for the map of pollution locally

Click here for The British Geographical survey’s internal report on the Thanet underground water reservoir.

Mail it to your leader

I have had one successful outcome from my questions to the council that is Sandy Ezekiel’s email address leader@thanet.gov.uk is to be reinstated.

It’s a bit of a strange reflection on the way that the council operates that I could get it reinstated and he couldn’t, as it was the email address that he used for his official correspondence it must have been a considerable inconvenience to have it deleted.

I have also received a response to my enquiries about the Sericol leak click here to read, as it doesn’t concur exactly with the information given to me by the experts I consulted, I will have to get back to them and also may have to get more information from the council. Once I have done this I will be able to produce an informed posting about it, in the meantime click here to read the response.

Questions to the council

This is by way of an update on the questions I put to the council a while ago.

It’s strange really the council must waste so much time answering questions, whereas if they put the information on the website in the first place it would save so much of their resources.

I make a considerable effort to try and avoid official complaints, the freedom of information act and the local government ombudsman, the object being to get them to become more open in their attitude.

Click here for the questions and their responses

Click here for more pictures of Royal Crescent

I also asked them about deleting the leaders email address, which to my mind is just plain stupid, yes anyone who uses it gets an email back saying it was undeliverable, what they don’t get is an alternative email address to send his mail to.

I really don’t understand why so much of government has to handle IT so badly, TDC seems to excel at this.

Nor can I understand why there should be such delay answering the questions about the Sericol leak, if the vapour is coming out of the ground at Westwood and the expert advice I have taken concluded it must be then it begs some very difficult questions. Not the least of which is, is it safe for the people working there?

Commercial Appendix

Firstly for those of you who are interested in old Ramsgate businesses click here for the commercial appendix to my publication Ramsgate illustrated, I have just put it on the web.

Now a bit of a Sunday meander, first having given some thoughts to the asset sales, it does seem that the council lacks any sort of proper plan for Ramsgate.

Selling off the maritime museum seems pretty stupid, one would have thought selling off the tourist information office and relocating it to the museum site with a restructured museum, run by volunteers would be a much better option.

Losing control of a large chunk of the harbour also seems like muddled thinking, one gets the impression that instead of a proper plan for the future of the harbour and port, there is an approach of how much money can be bleed from it.

I gather that a lot of the business that could have come to the port when it left Folkestone was lost because of the council’s lack of action.

I still haven’t had any answers to my questions about the Sericol leak, but have had an answer from TDC saying that they are consulting with the environment agency and will soon produce some.

I am assuming that since there has been such a long delay getting answers to the questions, are crops being irrigated and washed with contaminated water, and are the fumes coming out of the ground at Westwood? Something is probably seriously wrong.

Having done more research on the subject I am fairly certain that Cyclohexanone would have spread to a fairly large area around the site, and that the vacuum extraction plant would be unlikely to have removed as much as half of it from the ground.

CHEMICAL CLEAR-UP

As Adscene has published a front page article about the leak directing people here for further information I have copied the post that did I when the Isle of Thanet Gazette published an article about it. I still haven’t had any satisfactory answers to the important I questions raised from the council.

I sent a letter to the Gazette, based on the post below, which they published this week with a response from the environment agency. The environment agency failed to answer the important questions below too, I have labelled them X1, X2 and X3, the only assurance that they did make is that it isn’t coming out of our taps now.

How dangerous is Cyclohexanone? The affects of exposure to this chemical are thought to cause neurological damage, damage to unborn children, altered immune system function, adverse effects on the respiratory system and affect the sensory system.

How much of the chemical would be dangerous? If you have to work in a contaminated environment in industry, you would have to wear a chemical protection suit and breathing apparatus where the concentration of the chemical exceeds 20 parts per million.

How much was spilt? No one really knows they have been extracting it from the chalk under Westwood since 2007 and have so far recovered about 500 tons of the chemical from the water pumped out of the chalk.

X1 Has it got into our drinking water, water used for crop irrigation and washing or water used for industry? No one really seems to know the complete answer to this one, most of the water used in Thanet is pumped from the porous chalk underground, as the leak went undetected for nearly 30 years and as there seems to be little regulation of private boreholes, it’s a bit of a grey area.

X2 Is the vapour coming out of the ground? I have asked the council and some of the local politicians, but haven’t yet received an answer

X3 Have there been any surveys of the health of the people living and working in the effected area because of the spillage? Once again I have asked the council and some of the local politicians, but haven’t yet received an answer.

What is this information based on?

The freedom of information request response from the environment agency click here to read

The International Labour Organization, part of the UN that produces regulatory information for member states click here to read

Scorecard the web's most popular resource for information about pollution problems and toxic chemicals click here to read

The British Geographical survey’s internal report on the Thanet underground water reservoir click here to read

Sericol Cyclohexanone leak

As the Isle of Thanet Gazette published a story about the leak I thought I ought to expand on it slightly, and answer as many questions as I can about it.

How dangerous is Cyclohexanone? The affects of exposure to this chemical are thought to cause neurological damage, damage to unborn children, altered immune system function, adverse effects on the respiratory system and affect the sensory system.

How much of the chemical would be dangerous? If you have to work in a contaminated environment in industry, you would have to wear a chemical protection suit and breathing apparatus where the concentration of the chemical exceeds 20 parts per million.

How much was spilt? No one really knows they have been extracting it from the chalk under Westwood since 2007 and have so far recovered about 500 tons of the chemical from the water pumped out of the chalk.

Has it got into our drinking water, water used for crop irrigation and washing or water used for industry? No one really seems to know the complete answer to this one, most of the water used in Thanet is pumped from the porous chalk underground, as the leak went undetected for nearly 30 years and as there seems to be little regulation of private boreholes, it’s a bit of a grey area.

Is the vapour coming out of the ground? I have asked the council and some of the local politicians, but haven’t yet received an answer

Have there been any surveys of the health of the people living and working in the effected area because of the spillage? Once again I have asked the council and some of the local politicians, but haven’t yet received an answer.

What is this information based on?

The freedom of information request response from the environment agency click here to read

The International Labour Organization, part of the UN that produces regulatory information for member states click here to read

Scorecard the web's most popular resource for information about pollution problems and toxic chemicals click here to read

The British Geographical survey’s internal report on the Thanet underground water reservoir click here to read

Something nasty in the water 2

I have published the environment agency’s letter to Rick click here to read it

The danger threshold limit value for Cyclohexanone is 20 parts per million, it can be absorbed through the skin, by inhalation or ingested, and we have a spillage involving 100s of tonnes of the stuff, which seems to have been covered up for years.

How on earth could such a large amount missing have gone unnoticed? Because of its nature you theoretically are not allowed to let it evaporate, I would hope that those people who advocate heavy industrial use on the source protection zones will reconsider their positions.