Senedd debate turns Hinkley Mud-dumping into Political Issue

People from as far as Swansea and Llandrindod joined local protesters in the rally outside the Senedd for the Hinkley mud debate.

Though the Assembly is supposed to hold the Welsh Government to account, the debate was largely political point-scoring rather than challenging set positions.

Not one of the AMs was ready to say NRW were lying in saying the chemical and radiological results from samples taken of the mud were within “acceptable, safe limits”. The published CEFAS data show toxic metals and PCBs above the Action Level-1. That's only "acceptable, safe" if they do a detailed assessment of effects on the wildlife-ecology; neither NRW or Cefas did one.

No AM answered claims of frequent sampling in 2009, 2012 and 2017 – that the number of core samples (5 in 2009 only) was below the minimum prescribed by international rules (7-15), so parts of the mud with high pollution expected from buried drums or leaks from the nuclear plant could well have been missed.

McEvoy (South Wales Central) and other AMs railed against dumping English waste in Welsh seas, but none of them mentioned the ban on dumping waste at sea at all – Jenny Rathbone (Cardiff Central) even said Cardiff Grounds is the place for dumping construction waste.  That ban (London convention) exempts dredging from shipping lanes, but excludes dumping of clays that make up 40% of the Hinkley dredgings.

The Minister came up with a claim that we, the Welsh people, had been “consulted” over the license in 2012.  So did anyone notice - did the local AMs inform us all? Where was the full information?  They now claim the Marine Consents Unit made a decision in 2012 that no EIA was needed – how strange to introduce this so late, when there’s a legal requirement to publish the decision and associated documents.  The Minister’s statement of Oct. 2017 just said “took into account the overall EIA for the Hinkley Point C project”.  That was insufficient for the company's defence at the Cardiff High Court when they conceded doing no EIA ten days ago.

Labour politicians pontificated about ‘we must be bound by the experts’, opposition politicians that we must respect the public.  Since the debate in May, the voting indicates David Melding and David Rowlands have moved against the mud dumping, while Jane Hutt, Julie Morgan and Mike Hedges moved to support it – resulting in a fully political split in voting, a deficit of independent thinkers prepared to read the facts.