31. More Charges
ReChem’s own reassurances about contamination had always relied heavily on the company’s own catalogue of test results and I’d always been curious about those findings. In 1989 the Welsh Affairs Committee itself questioned the integrity of the company’s comparisons between Pontypool and other regions and then, in 1991, stemming from the Committee’s recommendations, the University of East Anglia’s assessment of the Council’s data weakened ReChem’s own research conclusions. In 1992, further research published by another University, Lancaster, indirectly invoked more questions about the company’s own database. Here, herbage samples from Rothamstead Experimental station in Hertfordshire, taken over the years 1965 to 1989, had been securely stored and were now being analysed. Big PCB figures for recent years would have suited ReChem, if they would assuage the pattern materialising in Pontypool. However, under the headline “No solace for ReChem from trend in PCBs”, the environmental journal ENDS Report summarised Lancaster’s findings, which had appeared in the March edition of Nature:
Atmospheric concentrations of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in rural England have declined by a factor of about 50 since the late 1960’s according to scientists from Lancaster University The findings are in direct conflict with claims by the hazardous waste incineration business ReChem international that PCB levels increased across the UK during the late 1980s . . . The results are markedly at variance with ReChem’s claim that PCB contamination had increased five fold ‘throughout the UK’ between 1984-9.
Now, when Rechem’s reassurances about contamination in Pontypool were looking their frailest yet, the company’s pride in its technology also took a dive. The claim about the incinerator being “The Rolls Royce of incineration” was soured the following month by an announcement of the £2.5m investment in response to the Pollution Inspectorate’s demands for improvements. Those modifications did not extend as far as a rotary incinerator, but the Company did accept the need for new furnace door sealing arrangements, for extra gas cleaning equipment and for the enclosure of the de-ashing process. The words of the Inspectorate’s Jeffrey Barnett were music to my ears. His ultimatum stated: “That the existing incinerator does not accord with current best practicable means in regard to avoidance of emissions when there is a relatively large-scale, rapid deflagration of material charged to the furnace”.I hoped that the changes demanded would mean an increase in ReChem’s operating costs as well as provide an improvement in the air quality in New Inn.
It was lucky that the University of East Anglia was now controlling the study of contamination in Pontypool, for soon after the Australian waste affair was over Torfaen Borough Council’s time for testing for PCBs also ended. This was just one implication of the Integrated Pollution Control requirements of the New Environmental Protection Act. From 1st August 1992 the Council had to relinquish most of the few powers it had over ReChem. With additional regulation now on the books, in future the responsibility for implementation of the more comprehensive rules would lie with the company, the Pollution Inspectorate and The Environment Agency.Our relationship with the local authority had been very productive for a number of years but now we were entering uncharted territory. Although I was anxious about the learning curve for the new and more remote people in control I couldn’t help thinking that the Council officials were relieved to be out of it. Then, before local government finally lost its unenviable responsibilities for the administration of incoming waste, parliament itself returned to the issue of importation.This was when Paul Murphy won the opportunity for a Private Members Motion and chose the subject “Toxic Waste Disposal (Wales)”, which was his diplomatic way of saying “ReChem.”The Pontypool MP had carefully chosen his moments for incursions into the affair and this choice proved to be a perfectly-timed way of summarising the state of play. The debate took place on the morning of Friday 10th July 1992, ran from 9.37 until 2.30 and its transcript occupied a chunky seventy columns of Hansard.The MP opened the debate by moving:
That this house believes that the import of toxic waste into Wales should cease and that the commercial trade in toxic waste should come to an end; notes that there is considerable unease among the people of South East Wales about the activities of ReChem International, Pontypool; and calls upon the secretary of state to hold a full, independent and public inquiry into that plant.
He then paid tribute to the work done in Europe by Alan Rogers and Llew Smith, both of whom were now in the UK parliament. He also acknowledged the local campaigners, saying:
A number of pressure groups have sprung up in my constituency which are opposed to what is going on, including Mothers and Children Against Toxic Waste, the excellent STEAM headed by David Powell and the Panteg Environmental Protection group.
He told of the planning background to the plants arrival, the inappropriate location and the company’s original aim of providing a service to local industry, which had then turned into a global operation. He spoke of concern over PCB destruction efficiency and referred to the Pontypool plant’s outdated technology, using the language “. . . well past its sell-by date”, a term that chimed with me. He went on to address the difficulties in obtaining information amongst the general problems of regulating Rechem. Perceptively, he pointed out the potential for PCB emissions to come from the transformer handling process and he also raised the question of the writs, saying that the company was “. . . trigger-happy when it came to the courts.” He gave a subtle indication of ReChem’s propensity to find loopholes in the law and he laid bare the myth that the Pontypool incinerator was a godsend to less developed countries, by listing a host of rich nations who exploited the existence of the plant. His oratory peaked before he ended, with a passage of words close to my own heart:
The whole international trade in toxic waste is a disgrace to modern society and the brokers who engage in their murky and sinister trade must accept that, as a result of their activities, the poisons, the worst known to man, come to my constituency to be disposed of. Pontypool – indeed, Wales as a whole – is fast becoming the dustbin for the world’s worst poisons.
There were numerous additional contributions to the debate, coming mainly from Welsh MPs, but one exception, and with characteristic quick-wittedness, was Dennis Skinner, the Bolsover MP who had his own local interest in contamination. He came to the support of Llew Smith and at the same time may have extricated Conservative Rod Richards from an embarrassing moment involving statistics. During a period of the debate where figures were in danger of engulfing the debate, Rod Richards challenged Llew Smith over statistical significance.Judging by his questions, I wasn’t sure that Rod Richards had a better command of the subject than Llew Smith did, but at least the Blaenau Gwent MP admitted his ignorance of that concept when he gave parliament details of the leaked memos affair which he called the “massive cover-up.” In retaliation against Rod Richard’s sniping at Llew, Dennis Skinner neatly interjected that he would place more confidence in Llew Smith’s statistics than in the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s figures. The transcript of the debate suggests this intervention didn’t prevent further diversionary tactics being used by government MPs in order to eat up time in parliament. As part of the obfuscation, in adjudicating on the debate after five hours, Welsh Office junior minister Gwilym Jones spent ages giving ReChem and its surroundings a rosy image, showing his satisfaction with the application of regulations, ignoring most of the evidence of contamination and consequently rejecting Paul Murphy’s motion. Despite the verdict, the debate sparked-off further parliamentary activity in the form of Early Day Motions, including one such motion on toxic waste importation led by Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes. This midsummer blossoming of political activity gave us campaigners a hearty boost, kept the controversy alive in the media and added more clout to my defence.
The Tory MPs hadn’t taken the opportunity to support Paul Murphy’s new call for the reform of the waste trade in the debate even after their own environment secretary had just refused to agree to the Australian waste, and it looked as if his recent action was destined to be an isolated incursion into importation.That was until Michael Howard surprised us again. He sensationally announced the official ending of waste imports from Switzerland and intimated that the clock was ticking against waste from all developed countries.This was around that time that Greenpeace was shadowing the Maria Laura, which stopped off at Felixtowe en route to unload Australian PCBs in France after Michael Howard had prevented the waste coming to Britain. The ocean-going environmentalists set to sea aboard the Moby Dick, on an extended waste watching exercise aimed at drawing attention to the EEC’s return to the table for the forthcoming ratification of the Basel Convention.Foreign waste ships also faced a little local difficulty when our multiple protest target Bell Lines decided to close its container terminal in Newport. Following the Inspectorate’s ultimatum on technology, Rechem signalled its most significant investment so far, with a plan to install a rotary kiln incinerator in Pontypool; an announcement which caused Paul Murphy to reiterate his “past its sell by date” remark. The company denied that the investment was for environmental reasons.
The Moby Dick’s maritime patrol and Hampshire County Council’s pressure on minister David Maclean may have both contributed to progress in Brussels on 20th October, when an agreement was finally reached whereby individual EEC governments could ban waste imports from other developed countries. This pact formed a supplement to the ratification of the Basel Convention, which itself was directed to be done a further 15 months down the road. With that outcome, Greenpeace claimed victory in Europe whilst the organisation’s Madeleine Cobbing was quick to point out that the government still needed to make transform the entitlement to turn down requests into more than an entitlement. Just ratifying the convention could lubricate the wheels of the waste trade and even re-open the door for Australian waste and it was always possible that the progress now being made could be undone. Nevertheless, despite its lack of immediate impact and regardless of the question marks around it, the outcome of the October meeting in Brussels was to be savoured, for at last the free market ideology could no longer be used to protect the international waste trade.
Progress in Europe coincided with a twist connected with Rechem’s investment plans as the Mothers’ group took another petition to the Welsh Office, this time objecting to the company’s proposals to improve.Objecting to those improvements wasn’t as odd as it might have seemed for we first expected that the new incinerator plans would come under planning scrutiny and by doing so would be subject to associated environmental requirements. However, the company now insisted that the proposals did not need planning approval and need not be combined with a formal environmental impact assessment.
Near the end of 1992 my writ was still in its period of hibernation, with my solicitor Sally reporting Nabarro Nathanson’s difficulty in getting further instructions from Rechem. The University of East Anglia was now a year into its analytical search for certainty on contamination but I didn’t feel an urgency for the outcome any more. I felt that I was in the ascendancy and Sally was in the driving seat pressing for a suitable settlement when another revision of a previously proposed legal agreement arrived for me to consider. It didn’t take long for us to decide it wasn’t good enough.
The shifting balance in my legal battle reflected what was going on away from the High Court, yet in a niggling way Rechem’s Pontypool plant still stood on a pedestal. In the past, the company had been fined in Scotland over emissions from the Bonnybridge incinerator and also in Southampton, where additional compensation was paid over injurious emissions. Now, in Southampton, Rechem again got on the wrong side of the law. In November 1992, the action brought by the National Rivers Authority, regarding discharges into Southampton Water, resulted in a conviction at Totton Court. Southampton’s Friends of the Earth and Women’s Action Group provided the welcoming party at the court with a protest against imports. They saw the company fined £42,500 after pleading guilty to breaching consent limits for substances including arsenic, on six occasions between May and November in 1991.Before the dust had settled on that conviction, Southampton’s campaigners got more mileage out of the sewers by making use of the public register containing details of further excessive discharges of mercury and zinc, which the NRA had chosen not to go to court over.
When the Fawley plant succumbed to the NRA’s action, Rechem’s Pontypool plant, which was at the heart of the company’ successful litigious history, had remained resistant to the criminal law. Now, a period of purple iodine emissions into the Pontypool air provided the prelude to ReChem’s first prosecution in Wales - but it wasn’t over the iodine. It was Welsh Water who launched an action which appeared to be connected with the reported liquid leaks from the Pontypool plant in November 1991. The company was being prosecuted for polluting the Eastern Valley trunk sewer with hexachlorobenze and PCBs. In December 1992, the case was put on the list to be heard at Newport Crown Court.The Southampton prosecution was only indirectly relevant to my writ but I felt that the impact of a first Welsh conviction would be just enough to see my defence through to the winning post, regardless of where the University study heading on environmental contamination. As Rechem’s reputation continued to dive, I ensured that I remained whiter than white, with an up-to-date M.O.T. on the car, strict observation of speed limits and the avoidance of parking offences. I wanted the contrast between me and ReChem to be stark. On the same day as the date was revealed for the trial in the Welsh Water case, Sally wrote to me with Nabarro Nathanson’s latest response. She said they had accepted our amendment to the statement and seemed to rescinded the requirement for me to say nothing in addition about the case. What they substituted for that restriction wasn’t much better. They now proposed a joint press release about the outcome, which we could even draft, but after that the withdrawal of the writ would end all public communication of the case. I quickly posted a long handwritten letter explaining my misgivings about the latest offer. I wanted total freedom to tell my tale and I believed, more than ever, that I could achieve it.