Protest planned over ‘toxic’ mud dumping
WALES’ top quango is bracing itself for a demonstration on Bank Holiday Monday that will see it portrayed as a poodle of the nuclear industry which is not prepared to stand up for the interests of Wales.
Officials of Natural Resources Wales (NRW), however, remain convinced that plans to dump 300,000 tonnes of sediment from the construction site of a new nuclear power station off Cardiff pose no health threat.
Many thousands of people have signed petitions against the mud dumping, believing that NRW has not done all it could to establish it is safe.
They believe that not enough samples of the sediment were tested before a disposal licence was granted to the utility company EDF, which is largely owned by the French state.
The sediment is being displaced from Hinkley Point, in Somerset, on the other side of the Severn Estuary, where a new nuclear power station will be constructed to supplement an existing one whose operational life has been extended until 2023.
NRW has been wrong-footed by the campaign against mud dumping off Cardiff that began in summer 2017 – three years after permission was granted for the disposal to take place.
No-one appears to have picked up on the licence application when it was made, and NRW officials have been frustrated as opposition has mounted.
A document produced by opponents of the dumping allege that the proper processes had not been followed in granting the dumping licence and that international agreements had been ignored.
The document states: “NRW and the Welsh Government say it’s ‘safe’, but it’s not. The few samples of the deeper mud show elevated radionuclides and metals. NRW failed to require assessment of impacts on wildlife and humans. Welsh Ministers have a duty under the London Convention to strictly assess and limit disposal at sea, but failed to require EdF to take sufficient samples.”
The document continues: “The Welsh Government do not comply with the London antidumping Convention, [which states that] contracting parties shall prohibit ... any deliberate disposal at sea ... except as otherwise specified. NRW first claimed compliance but have never shown this.”
Article IV 2 of the Convention states: “Any permit shall be issued only after careful consideration of all the [relevant] factors ... and that “special care” [should be paid to] wastes containing significant amounts of [named toxic metals].”
Opponents of the mud dumping state: “Careful consideration and special care are not at all evident
All of the points made in the document are disputed by the NRW, which says it hopes to publish a detailed rebuttal in advance of Monday’s protest, outside the Senedd at noon.
A senior NRW source said: “They selectively quote from official documents, giving a false impression. They say the precautionary principle should be abided by, but it’s been built into the legal framework we are abiding by. People ask what Wales is getting out of this. The answer is that keeping the sediment within the Severn ecosystem is protecting that ecosystem. Ecosystems don’t respect national boundaries.”
Samples relied on by NRW when they say the sediment is safe were taken as long ago as 2009, when the new nuclear power station was in its planning phase. NRW officials say it is unfortunate that raw data relating to those samples have since been destroyed. in the NRW documents.”