Stormont advised to use ‘bottled water’ if toxic dump impacted River Faughan
Official response to risks of Mobuoy waste site deemed ‘disappointing’
A MEMO to the Environment Minister from one of their officials in 2020 advised that Derry people could be given “bottled water” if the toxic Mobuoy dump impacted on the city’s drinking water, a Stormont committee has heard.
The Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs committee heard the illegal dump is estimated to contain between 1m and 1.6m tonnes of waste.
The cost of reversing environmental damage at the illegal dump site at Mobuoy in Derry could range from £17m to £700m, according to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affair’s (DAERA’S) Annual Report and Accounts.
The site, which was shut in 2013, presents serious environmental and economic implications.
Speaking at the meeting yesterday, Daniel Mcateer from PCI Consulting said economic impacts would include the clean-up costs and contingent liabilities of not getting it right, and a detrimental impact on foreign direct investment due to Northern Ireland’s “apparent disregard for the environment”.
Furthermore, it is causing delays to the construction of a section of the A6 road.
Environmental risks include the potential impact on drinking water, with the River Faughan — which supplies 60% of Derry’s drinking water — situated close to the toxic dump.
Mr Mcateer said there was an
“astonishing memo to the Minister that plan B was, give people bottled water”.
He didn’t view that as a “very persuasive plan B”.
Reading from a Freedom of Information response, Mr Mcateer added: “When the Minister asked for an update he was told by one of the officials, ‘the site presents a live and current risk to the safety of drinking water for 50,000 households in the north west, which if realised, may in the worst case scenario require the supply of bottled water to those homes’.”
Mr Mcateer continued: “I think it’s disappointing that in the year 2024, our response to a catastrophe like this is that we’ll let them have bottled water. I think it’s a fairly primitive response.”
It hasn’t happened yet, but he said, “we believe you don’t wait until it happens to fix the problem, it continues to be a live risk”.
On potential agricultural risks, he said: “If I owned that land as a farmer and I wanted to go and try and insure it, I think my insurance premium might be around £1bn for the insurable risk, in fact it’s not an insurable risk because it’s an unquantifiable liability.
“We would know historically in this country, there were some diseases that got into the cattle as a result of this type of activity which almost wiped out our agricultural economy.”
PCI was asked to find a solution and came up with a “worldclass team of experts” and have tried to engage with various agencies since 2015.
“Unfortunately that engagement hasn’t really led to anything productive — in fact, it hasn’t really led to anything at all,” he told the meeting.
“We believe the approach taken from the very start has been misconceived, we also believe that we haven’t been given a fair opportunity to bring forward our proposals or our solution.”
Mr Mcateer stated: “This is a new way of doing things, and a problem of this magnitude, which has been described as, I quote ‘the biggest single environmental disaster in the history of the UK’,” for emphasis he repeated, “in the history of the UK”.
“We believe that an innovative approach is required here, something new has to happen.”
Mr Mcateer informed MLAS that PCI submitted a comprehensive solution in 2016 which has “fallen on deaf ears”.
He told the committee that a barrier should be installed immediately to protect the city’s drinking water.
It would then take a further four or five years to clean-up the site and it would be monitored for around 10 years thereafter.
This “credible solution” has been on the table since 2016, Mr Mcateer said.
Toxic material would then be moved to a new “properly engineered” landfill site situated about 13 miles away.
As a Derry man and someone trying to take the initiative, he described his experience as “utterly disgraceful” and believes if it was the private sector “they would be out of business by now”.
He can’t put a price on his own remediation work because he said the department has “refused to tell us” how much waste is on the site.
Mr Mcateer told the committee he spoke to the Director of Resource Efficiency Division Richard Crowe in a bid to find out why the cost range is so wide and told him “Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud because despite asking 150 questions you haven’t answered one”.
DUP MLA Tom Buchanan attempted to press Mr Mcateer on why he didn’t have his own price, and he responded by saying they haven’t been given access to the site and have been “stonewalled” by the department who use ongoing litigation as a reason to withhold information.
An NI Water spokesperson said it has contingency plans in place “for all of our Water Treatment Works (WTWS)”.
“The contingency plans provide a framework for dealing with and limiting the impact of a total loss of supply from the