Yet the license gave them permission to also excavate and dump base clays, estimated at 40% of the total.
One reason they stopped short is that we rumbled NRW's bending of the rules: dumping solid clays is forbidden under international OSPAR rules Guidelines for the Management of Dredged Material at Sea 2014, which
require permit conditions (10.3) designed to ensure that “solid waste contained within the dredged material should be separated and managed on land” (see NRW excuses)The second reason for stopping short is that their equipment found estuary clays difficult to handle.
# the bottom-opening barge Sloeber found the clay was sticking, not dropping out easily
# the giant dredger Peter-the-Great is inefficient in scraping up clay.
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| Peter-the-Great is a back-hoe dredger with bucket of 11m³, reaching 18.20 m dredging depth |
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| Clay material remained stuck in the bottom opening barges Pagadder and Sloeber (overheard on the ship's radio) |
The barges and dredger come at high cost, £118 000 per day EdF claimed in Court, so they put a brave face on it and cut things short. The Sloeber, Pagadder and Peter-the-Great have been sent back to work on the major shipping lanes in the Baltic and continental ports. Peter-the-Great was still in Barry Port on Sunday morning, waiting for the stormy weather to pass.
The anti-dumping movement now has a new opportunity, we in FoE believe, to re-start Court action to suspend the dumping license on grounds on no EIA - ie. the obligatory Environmental Impact Assessment. EdF can no longer threaten Cian Ciaran or other public-interest challenger with huge costs from suspending the license.
It would be good to know where this information comes from. EdF had years in which to investigate the characteristics of the mud yet, if what FoE says is true, it wasn't done properly. The public is asked to accept that the radioactivity in the mud was characterised properly. Many people didn't believe that and this news casts yet more doubt. What propects for prosecution?
ReplyDeleteand here's another thought: the sailors' trade union in Belgium has been briefed on the health issues and may well have thought that the risks to their members from radioactive contamination were unwarranted. The possibility that they were also colluding with illegal acts might have concentrated minds a bit.
ReplyDeleteinteresting possibility. Sailor TU's have long been sensitive to nuclear dumping and were important in securing the London anti-dumping treaty. Pressure on EdF from many angles caused them to curtail the dumping early.
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