Homes approved on Derbyshire site said to be ‘the most contaminated in England’

At an Amber Valley Borough Council meeting this week, councillors approved plans from David Ashley Construction for 250 homes on the Amber Valley Rugby Club site off the B600 in Somercotes.

During the debate, the meeting had to be temporarily adjourned and the public and press were at risk of being excluded after a heated shouting match broke out between councillors and a concerned resident.

Cllr Jason Parker, a member of Somercotes Parish Council and lifelong resident of the village, had yelled: “How can you go ahead with this application when it is filled with thousands and thousands of tonnes of toxic waste?” A member of the rugby club then yelled back: “We have been playing rugby on it for years and we are fine.”

Cllr Jack Brown had then called for the meeting to go into private session, at which point chairman Cllr Jane Orton announced a five-minute adjournment. Cllr Kellie Judson, speaking on behalf of the parish council, had told the meeting that the authority objects to the housing plans. She questioned why the authority was ignoring the parish’s independent expert.

Cllr Judson said: “There is reliable evidence of significant contamination risk that remains unexamined by the selective and flawed site investigations.”

She said the council needs to “properly understand the contamination position” on the site.

Cllr John McCabe, who represents Somercotes on the borough council, read out a formal complaint filed by the parish council.

He read that there is evidence of toxic chemicals migrating from north to south from the historic LS01 landfill into the rugby club site, which was also a waste dump known as LS41.

The complaint refers to the LS01 landfill site as “one of the most toxically contaminated historical hazardous waste landfills in the country”.

It alleges the site is contaminated with the “illegal dumping of toxic waste including highly toxic dioxin, which has been proven to be in the sub-soils across the LS41 landfill”.

The complaint continues: “This material probably originated from the demolition waste at the Chemstar factory, or some other similar industrial source.”

Cllr McCabe then said “This is the most contaminated site in England. We are putting people’s health and wellbeing at risk. Which one out of you (planning board members) will buy the first house on this site?

“We should be thinking about our children’s and our grandchildren’s wellbeing.”

Cllr Katie Simpson, who also represents Somercotes, said she too was opposed to the housing plans and was standing by residents in the area.

Diana Dixon, a Somercotes resident, told the meeting: “Everybody in this room knows that this site is contaminated, you know it (the planning board), I know it, we all know it.

“We need a guarantee that health risk issues will never affect our lives as a result of this site, nothing in any way or form.

“It is toxic. Would all of you voting here today move your family onto this site and buy a house on a toxic dump? If you don’t have the courage of your convictions to do that then don’t subject us to it.”

Helen Marks, agent for the applicants, told the meeting that there was no evidence of any dioxin identified in the ground investigation of the site. She said there had been no evidence of contamination identified which should stop development.

Ms Marks said an appeal inspector had refused plans for 200 homes on the site previously but this had been down to the lack of information on ground conditions, which the developer says has now been supplied, with ground gas monitoring and other studies.

Rae Gee, a council planning officer, said the appeal inspector had had no issue with the principle of building homes and that while the authority has land supply to last more than the five years required, “this is not a ceiling”.

She said the development would pave the way for a replacement rugby facility at Slack Lane in Riddings, which would have three pitches and floodlights and would represent a wholesale upgrade.

Ms Gee said while the developer cannot afford to build affordable homes on the site and to provide any money to support health services, due to the cost of remediation and investigations, they would still be providing £1.4 million to support schools and roads in the area.

She detailed that the council’s scientific officer was satisfied with the information provided and that “based on the evidence to date it is unlikely that further investigations will identify the need for extensive remediation that would impact on the viability of the development”.

Officials wrote in a council report for the meeting: “Further investigations are needed to confirm conditions across the site, but based on the results to date, it is highly unlikely that there will be a contaminant linkage, whereby volatile organic chemicals (harmful natural substances) represent a human health risk.”

Cllr Steve Marshall-Clarke said he was concerned that national Government would allow fracking sites across the country and that he was aware of a number of licences in the local area.

He was worried that fracking may disturb the historic LS01 and LS41 landfills.

Cllr Marshall-Clarke said: “You can get things migrating from one area to another as a result of fracking and there is contaminated land extremely close to this site.

“By giving approval and then asking for investigations we are shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted and we will have let the cat out of the bag.

“I am concerned about people living in these homes.“We have professional experts saying this site is not contaminated but there is a contaminated site next to it, we have experts saying the contamination is migrating into the site and we have experts saying the site is already contaminated.”

Cllr Ron Ashton, vice chairman of the planning committee, said: “There has been substantial investigation into this. Is Amber Valley Borough Council fully happy with the review of the contamination? Are we fully satisfied with the amount we know about the contamination?”

Ms Gee responded: “We have moved a long way since the appeal and we have now had investigations into ground gas and into contamination migration.

“We are satisfied that there has been enough investigation to overcome the planning inspector’s concerns.”She said there had been no evidence of any dioxin or radioactive substances on the site, or “the really nasty stuff”.

“When you don’t want to build on greenfield sites, these are the sites that you would need to be looking at, it ticks all the boxes,” she said.

Councillors voted nine votes for and three votes against to approve the 250-home plans.

After the meeting, Cllr Parker told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the LS01 waste dump is the “most toxic tip in the UK”.

He said: “We have got an extremely deadly chemical in our community and where is the duty of care from the council to monitor it?”

The Environment Agency said when it investigated the site it found “low-to-trace concentrations” of a range of toxic substances, including Chromium VI – the carcinogenic chemical which is the focus of the 2000 film Erin Brockovich – and dioxins (the same family as Agent Orange), have been found in the limited investigations carried out so far.

There is little documented about the former waste tips LS01 and LS41 due to lax historic legislation over the handling of hazardous substances, with the council openly confirming that there are many years in which nothing is known about what was deposited in the dumps, particularly LS01.

Eyewitnesses have previously told the LDRS about lorries frequently dumping substances into the tip of Norman Road, above the rugby club, at nighttime.

Councillors have pointed out that materials were dumped into the pit before any modern forms of containment and with no ground gas being effectively vented to avoid hazardous build-ups.