Public meeting on Cwmrhydyceirw Quarry

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.

Resumed tipping at Cwmrhydyceirw Quarry will cause major nuisance for local residents

The decision to allow tipping to resume at Cwmrhydyceirw Quarry will cause nuisance and danger to local residents. We believe strongly that the announcement by the Environment Agency that they are not in a position to refuse the application and will be issuing a permit for landfilling at the Morriston Quarry, will mean that lorry movements, noise, smells and dust will hit the surrounding residential area and local schools hard.

The last time domestic waste was deposited in this Quarry was in the 1980s. At that time local residents suffered badly from infestations of flies, noise and nuisance from constant heavy lorry movements and appalling smells. It is also the case that nobody fully knows what was placed in the Quarry and there are strong suspicions that there are up to 100 tonnes of hazardous substances buried there.

Before the new operator can start tipping he will have to dig out the existing material, re-line the quarry and put it back in place. That work has the potential to reopen the problems from the 1980s. There are also questions as to whether the re-lining work is viable and as to whether the watercourses can be protected from pollution emanating from the waste.

If tipping is allowed to resume then residents will have to suffer over twenty heavy lorries visiting and leaving the site each day. This is a residential area and there are a number of schools situated in the vicinity of the site. The dangers posed by such vehicle movements are unacceptable. This decision cannot be accepted by local residents or their representatives. We will be using the consultation period to argue against the granting of this permit in the strongest possible terms.