Local Residents Fight Parkwood Landfill Expansion Proposals
Local Resident | 04.05.2005 10:55 | Sheffield | World
Proposals are being put before the council this week
for a massive enlargement of the Parkwood Landfill
site, allowing a substantial increase in capacity from
just 266,000 tonnes a year to a staggering 1 million
tonnes. The Parkwood Landfill site is on the edge of
Shirecliffe and overlooks many areas including
Hillsborough, Upperthorpe and Walkley. Local residents
are fighting these proposals and demanding a public
consultation. However, their on going investigation
into the proposals is raising more questions than
answers. Residents are beginning to see a possible
link emerging between the new massive incinerator in
Sheffield, which is nearing completion, and the
proposals for the enlargement of the Parkwood Landfill
Site. If under these proposals the Parkwood landfill
site was to have its suspended special waste licence
reinstated, the expansion of the landfill site would
enable the ash from the new Bernard Roads incinerator
to be dumped there.
http://www.sheffieldgreenparty.org.uk/
for a massive enlargement of the Parkwood Landfill
site, allowing a substantial increase in capacity from
just 266,000 tonnes a year to a staggering 1 million
tonnes. The Parkwood Landfill site is on the edge of
Shirecliffe and overlooks many areas including
Hillsborough, Upperthorpe and Walkley. Local residents
are fighting these proposals and demanding a public
consultation. However, their on going investigation
into the proposals is raising more questions than
answers. Residents are beginning to see a possible
link emerging between the new massive incinerator in
Sheffield, which is nearing completion, and the
proposals for the enlargement of the Parkwood Landfill
Site. If under these proposals the Parkwood landfill
site was to have its suspended special waste licence
reinstated, the expansion of the landfill site would
enable the ash from the new Bernard Roads incinerator
to be dumped there.
http://www.sheffieldgreenparty.org.uk/
In addition to the proposed expansion of the Parkwood
Landfill Site, Viridor, the operators of the site,
also want to build a gas utilisation and a leacheate
treatment plant within the area. (Leacheate is created
when water runs through a landfill site). Local
residents and environmental campaigners are concerned
that the gas utilisation plant will be a hazardous
blot on the landscape until 2050 and that the leachate
treatment plant will be producing hazardous waste in
its treatment works until 2035. Campaigners report
that Viridor have approval from the Environment Agency
for these proposals and that permission will also be
sought to deposit the potentially toxic sludge in the
ground. This potential dumping of toxic sludge will
neither be confirmed nor denied by the Environment
Agency. Instead, the Agency insist until the sludge is
tested they will not know one way or another whether
the material is hazardous.
On Friday 6th May (at a time yet to be arranged) these
proposals are going before the Sheffield Council
planning board. Campaigners believe that the local
council seems prepared to give Viridor's proposals the
go ahead. The local protest group, Parkwood Landfill
Concerned Residents Group (backed by nearly 2000
signatures)want this planning decision to be delayed
until they have had a properly informed public debate.
The group met with the Environment Agency on Tuesday
3rd of May to discuss problems and concerns over
Parkwood Landfill Site in advance of the planning
board meeting.
It seems that Sheffield people have been repeatedly
mislead over the plans for the landfill site.
Initially people were told no waste would be dumped
near homes without a new planning application and
public consultation. However it appears that local
planning officers have processed these new proposals
under an old 1986 planning permission. In addition,
local people were promised this site would never be a
hazardous waste site again. This was after 7 tonnes
of industrial batteries, stored in a plastic container
and with some containing lithium, exploded releasing
mercury into the air while people watched. In this
context local residents and action groups were told
the leachate facility was an environmentally friendly
reed bed based one and the gas facility was for
capturing the gas of bricks and building rubble - but
bricks are inert waste and do not produce landfill
gas! Many people have since bought houses in the area
under the belief that the Parkwood site was shortly
going to close, landscaped and made into a park and
golf course. This has not happened.
One person has even photographed a large truck being
buried in the Parkwood site. Viridor were challenged
over this and reported that this was a legal activity.
Local Residents are subject to constant unpleasant
smells and noise that comes from the Parkwood Landfill
site. Local people are worried that their health is
suffering as a result of pollution coming from the
landfill site. The health survey undertaken of the
area looked at just one in ten people. The result
didn't match the amount or forms of illnesses that
residents are seeing among their families and the
surrounding community. The community want regular
health monitoring for all the people in the area.
Concerns about the health impacts and a high reported
rate of cancer amongst people living in the area of
the Landfill site is said to be the reason why a few
years previously David Blunkett asked local MP Richard
Caborn to look into local people's concerns about the
site.
For a bird's eye view of Parkwood Landfill site go to
the top of Standish Way in Shirecliffe and you will be
amazed.
Councillor Jillian Creasy can be contacted by telephone on 0114 272 7886 or by e-mail at
jillian.creasy@sheffield.gov.uk
Surgeries:3rd Saturday in the month from 10.30 to 11.30 at Highfield Library, London Road.
Postal address
Councillor Jillian Creasy, Town Hall, Sheffield, S1 2HH
Local Resident
Landfill Site, Viridor, the operators of the site,
also want to build a gas utilisation and a leacheate
treatment plant within the area. (Leacheate is created
when water runs through a landfill site). Local
residents and environmental campaigners are concerned
that the gas utilisation plant will be a hazardous
blot on the landscape until 2050 and that the leachate
treatment plant will be producing hazardous waste in
its treatment works until 2035. Campaigners report
that Viridor have approval from the Environment Agency
for these proposals and that permission will also be
sought to deposit the potentially toxic sludge in the
ground. This potential dumping of toxic sludge will
neither be confirmed nor denied by the Environment
Agency. Instead, the Agency insist until the sludge is
tested they will not know one way or another whether
the material is hazardous.
On Friday 6th May (at a time yet to be arranged) these
proposals are going before the Sheffield Council
planning board. Campaigners believe that the local
council seems prepared to give Viridor's proposals the
go ahead. The local protest group, Parkwood Landfill
Concerned Residents Group (backed by nearly 2000
signatures)want this planning decision to be delayed
until they have had a properly informed public debate.
The group met with the Environment Agency on Tuesday
3rd of May to discuss problems and concerns over
Parkwood Landfill Site in advance of the planning
board meeting.
It seems that Sheffield people have been repeatedly
mislead over the plans for the landfill site.
Initially people were told no waste would be dumped
near homes without a new planning application and
public consultation. However it appears that local
planning officers have processed these new proposals
under an old 1986 planning permission. In addition,
local people were promised this site would never be a
hazardous waste site again. This was after 7 tonnes
of industrial batteries, stored in a plastic container
and with some containing lithium, exploded releasing
mercury into the air while people watched. In this
context local residents and action groups were told
the leachate facility was an environmentally friendly
reed bed based one and the gas facility was for
capturing the gas of bricks and building rubble - but
bricks are inert waste and do not produce landfill
gas! Many people have since bought houses in the area
under the belief that the Parkwood site was shortly
going to close, landscaped and made into a park and
golf course. This has not happened.
One person has even photographed a large truck being
buried in the Parkwood site. Viridor were challenged
over this and reported that this was a legal activity.
Local Residents are subject to constant unpleasant
smells and noise that comes from the Parkwood Landfill
site. Local people are worried that their health is
suffering as a result of pollution coming from the
landfill site. The health survey undertaken of the
area looked at just one in ten people. The result
didn't match the amount or forms of illnesses that
residents are seeing among their families and the
surrounding community. The community want regular
health monitoring for all the people in the area.
Concerns about the health impacts and a high reported
rate of cancer amongst people living in the area of
the Landfill site is said to be the reason why a few
years previously David Blunkett asked local MP Richard
Caborn to look into local people's concerns about the
site.
For a bird's eye view of Parkwood Landfill site go to
the top of Standish Way in Shirecliffe and you will be
amazed.
Councillor Jillian Creasy can be contacted by telephone on 0114 272 7886 or by e-mail at
jillian.creasy@sheffield.gov.uk Surgeries:3rd Saturday in the month from 10.30 to 11.30 at Highfield Library, London Road.
Postal address
Councillor Jillian Creasy, Town Hall, Sheffield, S1 2HH
Local Resident
Local Resident
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
PLEP Concern
04.05.2005 22:54
As I understood it, from work research in the Hillsborough area in 2003 and an article by another local resident in the Burngreave Messenger in 2003(see Messenger website), the Landfill section of Parkwood was set to "close" in 2007/2008 due to reaching capacity.
(I was up on Shirecliffe top very recently watching a good many trucks and lorries come and dump their various(hazardous?) wastes into holes then covered by huge tractors and dumper trucks ....and the landscape has changed from hollows, hills and scrubland when I lived up there(Shirecliffe) as a kid and walked the dog in the 1970'/1980's, to an almost mountain of soil covered domestic and commercial wastes of almost 40 years now - a potential timebomb?).
If you look on a map or an A to Z, you will see that Parkwood Landfill/Shirecliffe tip area is the largest open space/non-residential space in Sheffield, larger even than Eccleshall Woods.
The research I mentioned above has quite a wide variety of environmental and commercial organisations interested in useage of the area in future years.
The Sheffield Wildlife Trust had research carried out a year or two ago. The Sheffield Ski Village, I think, has just been given permission to expand a little. The rambling/scrambling bikers are all over there(where it is not fenced off) on a week-end and are looking for some "official and recognised" space of their own and the industry lower down toward the River Don is winding down its demolition and dumping of bricks/soils hopefully to give back land to the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery who maintain around 7 acres just above the River at the rear of Cadbury Bassetts factory.
Then there are the plans for the Upper Don Walk Trust and partners to extend the River Don walk from Sheffield Centre right up and along that Parkwood Valley up to Oughtibridge. Those are just a few of the "parties" involved or interested in developing or conserving the Parkwood/Shirecliffe/Neepsend area in the next 10 to 15 years.
All of these plans might be jeopardised by another 25 to 40 years of dumping of sometimes unregulated wastes, although, of course, Viridor and others there, have invested a fair amount of money into fencing off a large area which contains their and others operations.
What they cannot fence off, of course, is the wind. I have been over in Wisewood in the past, looking across the Valley to Parkwood and have seen huge fires raging at night on Parkwood landfill site on a couple of occassions. The wind (and leachate too) will, and almost certainly is, spreading pollution and contamination of who knows what chemicals/toxins? into the Sheffield(not JUST Shirecliffe) air and into the River Don.
Bear in mind too, that this toxic timebomb of 40 years now is less than a mile from Sheffield City Centre.
I agree that there MUST be a halt to this planning for "Landfill and leachate control" until a public consultation/inquiry can get to the bottom of just WHAT is planned, expected and regulated.
Sheffield bloke
Local resident two
Pictures to get you in the mood!
06.05.2005 21:39
sheffjeff
Parkwood petition
16.07.2005 16:41
Paul Antcliffe
e-mail:
paul@paulantcliffe.wanadoo.co.uk
Homepage:
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