The residents association fighting the re-opening of Cwmrhydyceirw Quarry will be holding a public meeting on Wednesday 6th August at 7pm in the Memorial Hall. At that meeting representatives will be reporting back on their meeting with the Environment Agency and operators S.I. Green the previous evening.
We have been passed files from the early 1990s detailing some of the material already buried on site. This material will need to be dug up and placed in a new cell before the site can be utilised for further waste disposal. The Environment Agency does not seem to have a copy on its files of this information.
In addition to local industrial waste such as Alcoa filter cake, spent vanadium catalyst from Alcoa, pellets treated with PCP from RAF Caerwent, ferrous sulphate monohydrate from BSC Velindre and powdered lime from Trostre amongst many others, the site contains a lot of imported waste. Thousand of tonnes of boiler ash, fly ash and filter cake from Vienna's municipal incinerator for example has been deposited there. This is recorded as 10,000 tonnes in 1989, at least 27,500 tonnes of imported incinerator ash in total. Much of this waste would be classified as hazardous today and would require specialist disposal, however S.I. Green will be allowed to re-bury it on site.
At a meeting last week residents drew up a list of questions they would want to ask of S.I. Green and the Environment Agency. Chief amongst these is how this hazardous waste will be rendered safe and what treatment will be used once it has been dug up to protect nearby residents and schools. It is important that we use the consultation period to pin down the Agency on key issues like this and demonstrate how unworkable a fresh tipping licence would be for this quarry.
