14. From Vulnerability to Invincibility
In the late 1980’s when under siege from protests and publicity, the beleaguered company provided a taste of what was to come in defence and attack. Cardiff based public relations firm, Golley Slater, was increasingly called upon to promote the company’s image and the scene was set not long after I entered the fray. Shortly after spreading communicating that the state authorities found no grounds for believing the plant was a threat to human or animal health, a Golley Slater press update of 18th October 1984 delivered a robust message with two main thrusts. One of the points was legalistic, the other scientific.
The introduction to the P-R statement said, “In view of the unjustified, persistent and highly damaging attacks which are being directed against the legitimate activities of ReChem International Limited . . .” This approach provided an insight into what would be the company’s forthcoming legal response to criticism. Then, there was the categorical; “To date every item of test results has unequivocally shown that no pollution of any kind is being caused by the activities of ReChem . . .” That statement typified the whiter-than-white image that would become a hall-mark of the company’s stance in scientific arguments over contamination. The press releases didn’t improve local attitudes and, as if defiance of ReChem’s public relations push, a call to “Quit our valley” call was made by Pontypool’s voluble parliamentarian Leo Abse at a packed public meeting in November of 1984.
The results of tests from leading analytical institutions were said to concur with the company’s own re-assuring conclusions about contamination. The independent tests supported the company’s previously stated position, which was that the soil around the plant was as clean as expected for rural soils. Unconvinced about this, I was also at odds with the company’s reasoning that new health data gave ReChem a clean bill of health. That data was contained in a letter on congenital abnormalities from Welsh Office minister Wynne Roberts to MP Leo Abse. Even though I derived that the incidence of birth defects in Torfaen during the reported years 1978-82 was actually 35% greater than for the whole of Gwent I had a much deeper cause for concern with what the figures didn’t reveal. The recorded birth defects didn’t include those that had led to therapeutic terminations. This subtle omission of the data on terminations also raised caused concern in a man who knew more than most about that data. He was Dr. Anthony Jones, consultant radiologist at Gwent’s main hospital with whom I collaborated, as a vehicle for whistle-blowing, when he wanted to highlight the failings in the figures. Such flawed official re-assurances only tended to raise more questions about the government’s impartiality and they helped motivate the demands for more extensive investigations. Towards that objective, as we campaigners ended 1984 with a festive demonstration at the plant, Gwent County Council prophetically lobbied for an enquiry by Parliament’s Welsh Affair’s Committee
In 1985, the year after the acid incident, Fawley residents sustained their protests to stop PCB burning and in March they saw ReChem fined for that incident by Hythe Magistrates. That led on to ReChem paying out-of-court compensation to 57 of the EniChem workers affected by incinerator emissions the previous September. For the Scots, with the closed Bonnybridge incinerator, there was still no end to the controversy. Media coverage of deformities in babies and farm animals continued and at the beginning of the New Year the Observer totalled five babies with rare eye defects whose mothers had residence qualifications in the region of ReChem’s Scottish plant. Dr Alexander Speirs told the Lenihan committee of a “disturbing” number of babies born at Falkirk Royal Infirmary during the previous year with serious abnormalities. Three had eye abnormalities and three had obstructed passages to the bowels, within a total of eight for the whole of Scotland. Dr. Speirs had a reputation for making observations, having previously alerted the medical world to the connection between Thalidomide and abnormalities. The national press also drew attention to a number of babies with similar problems in and around Pontypool. Richard Collins, the consultant at Moorefield Hospital who dealt with some of cases also expressed his concern that such rare defects were so common in the two localities, as the expectation would be only 1 instance per year, per million of the population. ReChem’s management was naturally aggrieved by publicity connected with health issues, which they felt was pointing a finger at them. The documentary programme TV Eye found itself under police investigation for obtaining a Bonnybridge plant log book containing records of low-looking furnace temperatures, which could imply that poisons were being emitted. As babies’ eye defects continued to be in the news, campaigners north and south of the border awaited the results of a number of scientific investigations. From those investigations, four ReChem-friendly reports were issued in quick succession. The first report, in January 1985, contained the latest results from researchers at Harwell and it said that dioxin contamination from ReChem’s Bonnybridge incinerator was insignificant. Next, a veterinary report commissioned by the company itself said that ReChem was not to blame for deaths or defects in cattle at Bulmoor Farm, some miles from Pontypool. The Scottish Lenihan Inquiry concluded that there was no evidence of ReChem adversely influencing health around Bonnybridge and then, at the end of February, ReChem’s own analysis of 104 soil samples painted a picture of only low levels of PCBs in Pontypool. The rationale of the Lenihan study was hotly contested by campaigning group SCOTTIE, whilst MP Dennis Canavan and MEP Alex Falconer gave backing to research assistant Jonathan Wills’ 125-page chronology of events at and around the Bonnybridge plant. Its reading provided everything but reassurance about ReChem.
Publicity during the climax to the Bonnybridge controversy in 1984 had driven ReChem to sue the Scottish Sunday Mail and Thames Television’s TV Eye documentary programme. Starting a trend, both the newspaper and the broadcaster eventually yielded to ReChem. The company further exercised its legal muscle by challenging the summons received in Scotland for breach of the Control of Pollution Act. The challenge was on a technicality: that the regulations, on which the Control of Pollution Act was based, had not yet been brought into effect. The launch of ReChem’s first writs, together with the deflection of the Scottish summons, opened-up an era of legal domination by a company now acquiring a reputation for reliance on the court. The ensuing meekness of the media could be contrasted with the company’s increasing confidence in defending itself against incoming regulatory fire.In a five-year period from 1984, the number of writs issued by ReChem’s lawyers climbed into double figures whilst press and public debate was damaged for a decade or more. By the end of the 1980s, when ReChem went after me, the company’s legal muscle appeared to be indestructible.
We in STEAM once speculated about the clout that ReChem might have by virtue of its parent company’s political donations, since both waste imports and regulatory controls were clearly dependent on government policy. However, in the aftermath of the corporate separation, B.E.T.’s relinquishing of ReChem didn’t cause the government’s support to waver. In our own marketing strategy, we had substituted the 1970’s “Close ReChem” call by intricate arguments that didn’t only focus on problems with the Pontypool plant but specified precisely what needed to happen to improve the situation. Yet, we were quite aware that our recommendations would make little impact without a stamp of independent expertise and that such expertise was scarce in Britain. In that respect MEP Llew Smith’s initiative of using European funds to bring international experts to South Wales certainly helped raise the status of campaigners' arguments. After the MEP’s international conference in Cwmbran in April 1985, newspaper headlines said “Rechem plant needs £10 million upgrade” and for the first time we had an authoritative platform from which to press for progress in technology, regulation and monitoring. Shortly after that the Pollution Inspectorate announced that Rechem were required to spend £1.7 million on electrostatic precipitation equipment for cleaning particulates from emissions. The investment for the removal of particulates from the smoke was intended to prevent the dark plume from the stack - a phenomenon previously portrayed as illusory. Despite that implementation of one of our recommended improvements, we were under no illusions about the limit to which we could directly influence matters without engaging official bodies in a way they hadn’t been used to. Top of our list was Torfaen Borough Council.
Most members of STEAM lived a few miles outside the Torfaen’s boundary, had no formal leverage on the Council and risked being seen as interferers. The original campaigning group, PEPA, was the Council’s established conduit and we, as relative outsiders, risked colliding with those already on the inside track with the Council and other bodies.Fortunately, PEPA’s organisation of a march through New Inn shortly before Llew Smith’s seminal conference in April 1985, helped unify the campaign and the Cwmbran conference itself also blurred the boundary between the intruders STEAM and the public of Torfaen. Then, just before S.T.E.A.M blended-in further with the Torfaen public during May’s second Toxic Watch on ReChem, a BBC Newsnight broadcast about PCB contamination at Torfaen’s Tirpentwys tip appeared to have uncovered some badly needed evidence of Rechem’s chemical footprint and it shocked the Council into action.
Previously out of sight and out of mind, the tip used for the dumping of the remains of incineration was nestled in a naturally beautiful valley at Tirpentwys. The location, previously scarred by the waste from a recently closed coal mine, had been turned into a municipal rubbish dump and a separate refuge for industrial waste. When Newsnight broadcast their investigators’ discovery of PCB contamination at the tip in May 1985, communities in the vicinity burst into activity. Energetic campaigning groups sprang up from the small community of Tirpentwys itself, from the tiny village of Pantygasseg on the plateau above, from the village off Cwmffrwdoer on the plain below and from further away in urban Pontypool. These groups held their own meetings and protests which included stopping and inspecting vehicles carrying ReChem’s waste when the vehicles were approaching the tip. At the time of those protests I was out on teaching practise in Pontypool and I would join the Tyrpentwys tip-watchers after school, to climb onto the waste lorries and look into the skips. I also joined in with the spectacularly spontaneous Pontypool group formed by Val Hearth and her friends. Their town centre petitioning for an inquiry soon spawned a secondary protest about public rights in the privately owned shopping centre of Cwmbran. The owners of the town centre, Ladbrokes, wouldn’t allow signatures to be collected on their property, claiming the activity was political. Consequently Ladbrokes became the subject of another petition from a new group now protesting about the extent to which Ladbrokes exercised control of the town centre. Taking on the role of a super-hero, Torfaen Council then came to the rescue by donating the municipal bandstand, in the central square of Ladbrokes shopping centre, so that the campaigning could continue.
In July, the people of from high up in Pantygasseg stole the limelight. They took their own little petition signed by 100% of the 60 hilltop villagers to Downing Street before Val Hearth’s Pontypool women took a massive 10,000 more signatures to the Welsh Office in Whitehall.By now, Torfaen Council’s own view of the situation was crystallising and in August the Council launched its own petition for an inquiry into ReChem. The momentous move was backed by the South Wales Argus, which urged its readers to “Support the petition” and carried a picture of Mayor Herbert Prosser leading the way.The PCB findings at the tip combined with the TV response of ReChem’s Managing Director had created a new level of awakening amongst the public and hopes of a breakthrough rose high, but those hopes of were dashed when the company took legal action against the BBC.With Rechem denying responsibility for the PCB contamination at the tip and on a course for another legal victory, the reality of ReChem was then evoked by some Health Authority workers complaining of throat and eye irritations, from a haze encountered alongside the plant whilst they were on their way to work. This was the day before the Pontypool campaign group’s weighty petition was delivered to Whitehall. In quick succession, the day after Nicholas Edwards, Secretary of State for Wales, had received that petition, the Council itself decided that, petitions aside, enough was enough. On my wife’s birthday, July 25th 1985, and after eleven years of troubles with the incinerator, the Council announced that it was to prosecute ReChem over the recent emission of an “objectionable odour” in New Inn.The move proved to be only the first of a series of charges to be accumulated against the company. The next incident on the list was one of smelly black clouds on 30th August, when Rosalind Plum was physically sick, and after which her husband managed to get ReChem to admit there was a problem at the plant. Two days after that happened another incident was added to the still unfinished list of indictments.
On the European front, things were also looking up as a result of Llew Smith’s succeeded in getting the European Environment Commissioner, Stanley Clinton-Davies, to meet up with the campaigners, the trade unions and the Council at Pontypool’s Town Hall in November. One emerging aspect of the European dimension was the questionable legality of the British government’s bizarre exemption of ReChem from the major hazard regulations that stemmed from the dioxin-producing accident at Seveso in 1976. At the same time as the legality of ReChem’s position in hazard legislation was being questioned in Europe, lawyers in Britain in 1985 continued to keep busy on ReChem’s behalf. The company had now experienced legal advances against all three ReChem plants whilst at the same time escalating its own actions against the media and making its first attempt to curb my activities. In the heat of the year’s battles, and still when operating under the B.E.T. umbrella, Rechem had announced the ending of PCB imports. We registered that as a reward for all the action in a year where protests were pre-eminent. However, when British Electric Traction sold ReChem in December, the sustainability of the import embargo was brought into question
Initially, we campaigners celebrated ReChem’s separation from its parent company, and under mounting pressure for improvements to be made, the smaller orphaned company publicly aired the prospect of closure. The cries were obviously heard by the government and with palpable seething within the local population; the Welsh Office came to ReChem’s rescue with a subsidy towards investment on emissions control equipment. That throwing of that lifeline demolished our idea that ReChem’s resistance would be weaker without its parent’s support. Whilst the knocked-down buy-out price suggested that B.E.T. hadn’t been confident of ReChem’s prospects, the Welsh Office aid demonstrated the government’s commitment to the company’s future and that future was further assured when PCB imports soon flowed into Wales like never before.
Our awareness of the ending of the company’s restoration of PCB importation had actually arisen by accident, when in January 1986 we learned on the grapevine that arrangements had been made for PCB waste to come from Western Australia. We then discovered that he believed ban had already been broken. The Australian affair that year produced protests from the public, politicians, newspapers and local Councils. It also led to our first visit to the Australian High Commission in London, on a trip where we also informed the Netherlands Embassy that we were watching Dutch waste too. The reaction from Holland was simply that its toxic waste exports would end if our own government asked for that to happen. With absolute intransigence from Westminster our pleadings increasingly went overseas, although often with the same response as we got from the Dutch. In another visit to London, Italy’s position was also made clear to us - the Italian authorities just said they had no power to stop the exports. Far more confusing was the Belgian rule-bending position, as described by the Ambassador in a letter to Llew Smith, whereby an existing Royal decree was supposed to have prohibited the importation and exportation of waste from the country. The growing hypocrisy in the conduct of the international waste trade was evident to all in Pontypool and the town’s local newspaper reflected the mood by suggesting that instead of Australia sending its waste here, we should export ReChem’s incinerator to Australia. Actually, that particular antipodean episode came to an abrupt end. After Australian electrical union leader John Gandini and David Jenkins of the Welsh T.U.C. became involved the Australian transport unions blocked the movement of the waste.
The successful outcome of that episode of Australian waste was in February 1986 and later that month a delegation from Torfaen Borough Council delivered the Council’s own 18,500 signature petition to the Welsh Office in Cardiff, with Leo Abse scheduled to carry it to London later. Gwent County Council also made a formal call for a public inquiry, but the two Councils’ inquiry requests were formally turned down by the Secretary of State for Wales, Nicholas Edwards. Torfaen’s case for the prosecution of ReChem moved along slowly and as a result of more emissions in July 1986, a fifth charge was added to the four carried forward from 1985 as smell and smoke were continuing to be persistent reminders of ReChem’s presence in Pontypool. The phenomena that were once portrayed as mythical by some were now clearly recognised by the Council, for some affected residents were granted a reduction in their rate payments. Public respect for ReChem reached a new low in June after I obtained inside information about an incident and then a month passed by before the company, under pressure, finally admitted that a worker had been burned in a solvent fire.That event was enough to nullify any kudos gained a little earlier in a propaganda coup, when Rechem managed to get top dioxin man Professor Christopher Rappe from Sweden, to endorse the Pontypool plant by concluding that an accumulation of evidence proved the plant was not polluting.The respected Professor’s position astonished me.
Under its strident new management, the word “ReChem” was increasingly held in contempt by the local public who, as 1986 proceeded, had their hopes renewed through continual press updates on Torfaen’s legal proceedings. However, I could see that whilst the company was commonly reviled in the community, I was concerned that the new management’s business acumen was drawing praise from further afield and I was becoming worried about the influence of Torfaen’s proceedings on the public. I could feel a false sense of security growing around me, which arose from people’s assumptions that the Council’s legal action would succeed and after that everything would be OK. With the Council having all its eggs in one basket out of fear of prejudicing their case, I tried to get people to reduce their expectations and to continue campaigning on all fronts. I had advocated many courses of action in relation to ReChem, but I had never pressed the Council to go to court over nuisance, since I feared the action would simply play into ReChem’s hands. The incinerator certainly enjoyed a period of business as usual while the Council was legally pre-occupied. All the time, the Pollution Inspectorate and the Welsh Office appeared calmly detached from the embattled Council and the period of petitions seemed to have made no impression on the regulators or on toxic waste importation. At the end of 1985 the separation between B.E.T. and the ailing ReChem had boosted the campaign, but during 1986 little stood in a rampant ReChem’s way and with the world crying out for somewhere to send its waste chemicals, it was clear that the recent EEC Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations were about to present Pontypool people with even more problems. Those regulations pushed Torfaen Council into a paper exercise that transformed the local authority hero to a villain, for the British government effectively compelled the local authority to sign away its self respect by approving every incoming toxic waste shipment. In 1987, when the Council’s case was expected to come to court, the company’s business performance continued to impress the City. In a sign of its prowess, the company made its critics cower when, two years on; it obtained an apology and £50,000 from BBC the over Newsnight’s 1985 Tirpentwys tip piece and other broadcasts. With the World Health Organisation sounding the alarm on PCBs and dioxins in breast milk, the toxic waste business became even more lucrative and the throughput was cranked up in Pontypool. That was when Friends of the Earth founder Graham Searle became associated with ReChem, or as we campaigners felt, sold-out to ReChem. We found his green credentials didn’t change the colour of the pollution from the plant, but he wasn’t the only incongruous ally of ReChem. As unemployment continued to gnaw at the fabric of society even the Trades Union Congress ducked-out of from an opportunity to make progress, by turning down a request of Torfaen Trades Council for support on waste proposals. In the June of 1987, when the Borough Council was content with its collection of incidents for court, those of us who weren’t optimistic about Torfaen’s prospects in the British Courts continued to ask Europe to see reason in the situation. Llew Smith worked tirelessly to get some European leverage on British regulations, as an alternative to dealing directly with British regulatory bodies. At the beginning of the year Llew’s determination succeeded, when the EEC Commissioner for the Environment, Stanley Clinton Davies, was persuaded to formally challenge the British government over its implementation of the European PCB directive. Llew also kept up the pressure for the EEC to correct our own government’s interpretation of the Seveso Directive on major hazards, whereby Rechem’s two plants were omitted from the 1986 list of such sites in Britain.
Also over the heads of the British government, early in 1987, protests about imported waste began to produce some payback when Dutch officials came to Wales to hear arguments from Torfaen Council. I was happy that the Council’s intervention contradicted my criticisms of the single track approach. Then, our messages of protest went way beyond Europe after we heard of a PCB deal with the New Zealand company, Electricorp. The new international venture wasn’t surprising, given that Britain’s reputation had now earned it a mention in the American book “Global Dumping Ground”. The UK’s imports of “special waste” in the year 1986/87 climbed to 53,000 tonnes after being down at 5,000 tonnes three years previous. ReChem’s profits soared as Pontypool rode astride the national tide of hazardous waste imports. Imports, profits and local annoyance went together. The company’s investment in public relations didn’t improve the public’s perception of the company and ReChem finally lost the battle for hearts and minds forever, through a conjunction of events which seemed to scream out the need for action.
On 16th September 1987, after it had been predicted to run for 5 weeks in Cardiff Crown Court, Torfaen’s case against ReChem collapsed on a technicality six days in. The newspapers had been full of witness accounts in support of the five specimen charges of causing a nuisance, a term which easily understated the witness evidence but which failed to stick.As if to question the sanity of that sudden not-guilty ruling, five days after the case collapsed there was a large explosion at the incinerator. Black smoke poured from the plant and it had all the signs of an emergency of the type which, according to the government, could not occur at ReChem.Images of the incident filled the media. If there had never been any reason to protest against the company during the previous thirteen years, there was then. Subsequently, a new Welsh Office report concluding that all was well with babies born in the area could only succeed in drawing further doubts about reassurances. Having detected a period of public complacency during the long wait for the trial I was now being besieged by people in uproar. Like them, I viewed the whole situation as crazy. The mood was reflected by the South Wales Argus, which immediately launched its own campaign for a public inquiry and gave out car stickers saying “ReChem: An inquiry NOW!” The same caption was thereafter used by the newspaper to highlight future articles on the subject. Pontypool’s M.P. Paul Murphy put forward a House of Commons motion for a public inquiry and then the accidental release of some super-smelly Mercaptan gas, engaged emergency services from Pontypool to Newport before Rechem owned up to the leak.
I would have been glad to have proved wrong in my own pessimistic prediction of Torfaen’s fate in the legal action and I gained no joy from the court’s verdict. However, I was delighted that I was incorrect in believing the failed action would be entirely futile. Yes, it was unsuccessful and very expensive, but in the catastrophic conclusion to the two years of hard work for the Council there were signs that the devastating failure could bring more progress than any measure of legal success.
The court’s verdict against the Council now meant that some homes had been receiving charge reductions for a nuisance which, legally, didn’t exist. However one resident, Alma Goodwin found a creative way of making her point about the magnitude of the nuisance. She felt the reduction in payments wasn’t enough compensation for the problems the incinerator gave her and at the beginning of 1988 she asked to pay the full amount to the Council, as a protest. An equally unexpected arising, which highlighted the impact of the incinerator on the mentality of the region, was the turning-away of a proposed German plastics factory, Ninkaplast. Although the area was clamouring for inward investment, Torfaen Borough Council’s anxiety about chemical waste from the TV casings factory contributed to the rejection of 140 jobs. The factory went to a nearby valley. Torfaen’s allergic reaction was understandable, as it occurred during the unrelenting controversy following the 1987 incinerator explosion and at a time when continuing emissions from ReChem were taking concern to new levels.
September’s explosion continued to occupy me long after the damaged incinerator had started working again. To produce that explosion, molten aluminium, from a PCB containing transformer, leaked through a crack in the hearth of the incinerator and made contact with water in the concrete below. Aluminium from the transformer’s core has a lower melting point than the commonly used copper core and a purpose-made steel container should have been used to contain the molten metal. Instead, the aluminium was free to flow and run down to the crack in the hearth. Aluminium is a deceptively acquisitive metal. Its everyday inert character actually arises from its strong desire to grasp oxygen from the air; by which process aluminium oxide coating is formed and which itself prevents further reactions with many substances it encounters. Without the oxide film the metal can shows its true, lively character, especially when hot. Molten aluminium can tear oxygen from water molecules leaving the remaining hydrogen gas free to ignite.This appears to be what had happened as the leaking, molten aluminium hit the damp concrete under the hearth of the incinerator. The hydrogen exploded, damaged the incinerator and produced the fire with clouds of black smoke, possibly from PCBs.
I suspected that PCBs and dioxins would have been released during the explosion, though Rechem said that no toxic substances were involved.Tests done by Bristol Polytechnic at the time were said to confirm that the solidified aluminium was highly contaminated, but later the Bristol analyst said that there had been an arithmetical error and new, lower, figures were provided.I was suspicious about the retraction, so I pursued the adjustment of the data with the analyst, Dr. Andy Tubb. I learned that a factor in the adjustment was the re-consideration of the mass of the samples of metal.There were small particles, larger lumps and even a whole block of aluminium which could be used as a basis for calculating concentrations. I concluded that lowered contamination figures had been produced by comparing contamination on the surface of the aluminium with the large mass of host material. I would have preferred concentrations of surface contaminants to act as a guide to PCB and dioxin releases to the atmosphere. I agreed to disagree with Dr. Tubb about the aims of the analysis but then he was probably just being asked to do a job. Nevertheless, whichever way you looked at it, it was clear PCBs were implicated in that 1987 explosion and fire - and that was after the toxic material involved had been in the incinerator for two hours.
Explosions and fires, sickening smells and rivers of smoke running through the streets: to date none of these had penetrated ReChem’s reputation of not emitting toxic substances, but on July 31st 1988 one of the regular occurrences caused a small crack to appear that eventually carved a new course in history. Ken and Shirley Caldicott’s records show that at around six in the evening, 10-year old Andrew Caldicott and his 7-year old brother Alex were playing in the garden when they became enveloped in a thick beige cloud with an aromatic smell. Just before that, black smoke was seen coming from the region of the incinerator door. Fed up with the plant’s bad behaviour, and concerned for her children, a furious Shirley called Torfaen’s environmental health officer Terry Jones, who soon arrived at her home. Then, conscious that her complaint could become just another in a long line which had been reported to the authorities and filed away, Shirley physically cornered Terry Jones and threatened to keep him in the room until action was promised. Her point was made and the environmental health officer set the ball rolling in a long process that eventually put Torfaen on the map for producing some pioneering environmental research. It all started with samples of