Granada News will be covering this event on Friday (tomorrow) at 12pm. Peter Brewin Derby Rd Residents group is asking as many people to make themselves available at this time. They will be meeting at the site opposite Clairemont Drive.
There are some views being expressed that the Derby Residents Group should wait until the council have thouroughly looked into the matter of remediation and decided whether to proceed with the proposals - I disagree with this position - balanced publicity opens up issues to further debate and scrutiny and the earlier this happens the better.
I think its important that in the interests of a balanced debate we should consider what the council's current position is. I spoke to Will Watson in the Environmental Health Dept recently and the following is an account of how he interprets the situation.
I wanted to get some idea of (i) the extent of the problem (ii) how it compared with the Rochdale case were the proposed development was turned down and (iii) what were the Environmental Health Depts current views.
Coincidently Will Watson was working with Rochdale Council at the time of the problems of the TAC site there so he is in a good position to give a balanced view in relation to comparisons.
He told me that there hadn’t been any in depth surveys carried out by the council on the Derby Rd site although he did mention that in the 1980’s the council had capped what had been a tip on the south side of the railway (not sure whether this related to work regarding to By Pass)
(i) Will said that the proposed plan would involve on the hotel and commercial units site the removal of all obstructions piping etc that contained a mixture of concrete and white asbestos. A main issue in this area is the brook that has material impacted with different types of asbestos down to a depth of 100 metres. This depth creates difficulties in relation to excavating the material so the area is to be capped
In the location were residential units are proposed, were it is considered there are less materials present, it would mean the removal of soils impacted with concrete and white asbestos material under what would be the sub base of the residential units. Some of these materials would be moved across the site to be capped with other materials in the hotel site/commercial units area. The remainder would be transported to specially designated landfill sites (not apparently Bold Heath Quarry)
(ii) The Eternit proposal compared with Rochdale differs in terms of the amount, predominance of the more dangerous types of asbestos and the depth of the material. In Rochdale there are greater amounts of asbestos material and a predominance of the more dangerous types of asbestos present and the depth of the materials tends to be greater. In contrast on the Derby Rd site the bulk of the material is on the surface and consists predominantly of the relatively more safe white asbestos bonded with cement.
There were plans in Rochdale to build 600 units on the site but the major concerns about the project were not so much about the dangers inherent in moving the asbestos material but that the developers could not satisfactorily demonstrate that the plans they had for remediation were viable. There actions were such that they tended to put the main players in the process off.
(iii) The view in the Envirnonmental Health Dept seems to be that if the developers can prove that at each stage of the remediation process they will be applying certain measures and they are able to substantiate the efficacy of this remediation than they would have no major objections about the proposal.
They are currently considering remediation plans put forward by developers and have involved a third party consultancy to ensure greater scrutiny.
I hope this is an accurate record of our discussion.
The health hazard issue about the development seems to come down to what are the chances of wind blown strands of asbestos occurring during the remedial work? If the proposal doesn't go ahead what is to happen to the site - it seems that the council will have a responsibilty to carry out remediation work on the site any way. Would this work follow similar lines to what has been proposed by the developers?
Its a dilemma for local residents in the area - if the development goes ahead would you like to live just yards away from such remediation work, even given assurances about the extremely minimal chances of being exposed to asbestos?
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