Environment Agency rubbishes independent monitoring from stinky landfill operator
PLUS: Further damaging revelations from Blackpool Victoria Hospital
Hello and welcome to The Blackpool Lead.
The back-and-forth over the Jameson Road landfill - and the extent of the stink coming from it - shows no sign of letting up.
An Environment Agency update this week confirmed what everyone living in Fleetwood already knew - the ‘independent’ reporting carried out by operators Transwaste is nonsense and doesn’t reflect what people are living with.
But while the Environment Agency acknowledges that residents shouldn’t have to tolerate the odours, that doesn’t mean they’ve taken the level of action that residents want to see.
We also reveal exclusively today further blunders at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, which was this week slammed by a coroner in relation to failures in regards to the unlawful killing of Valerie Kneale.
Black liquid, ‘independent’ monitoring and further calls for action at Jameson Road landfill
By Luke Beardsworth
The authority responsible for managing activity at a highly controversial landfill has slammed the company behind it and distanced itself from the updates it provides to the community.
Transwaste has been operating at the Jameson Road landfill in Fleetwood since September 2023 when residents were given no meaningful warning from anyone responsible when it reopened.
It has been subject to thousands of complaints over the extent of the odours with residents - and the local MP Lorraine Beavers - continuing to be appalled that concerns over their health are not being acknowledged in the form of meaningful action.
Transwaste has been publishing its own reports into the odours from its operations and have branded the concerns as ‘misleading scare stories promoted by some local activists’.
Its regular reports continue to insist that the odour is not causing a problem - but Transwaste has ignored repeated requests from The Blackpool Lead to share information about who is carrying out its monitoring.
Now, the Environment Agency has distanced itself from the report and said: “We want to be clear that any response or observations that are made by Environment Agency officers are independent to Transwaste. We will continue to make our own visits in the area and update you.”
Its own reporting in an update this week said that: “There have been less odour reports to the Environment Agency in August when compared to some of the previous months, however, our officers have been in the community and still noted landfill gas odours in recent weeks.
“Our odour surveys have included weekends and early mornings when people have reported that odours are present. The community should not have to tolerate odours that affect their environment.”
A new regulation notice was issued to Transwaste with a deadline of 5 September. The Blackpool Lead understands Transwaste has fulfilled the requirements of that notice as far as the Environment Agency is concerned.
However, investigations continue into black liquid discharge seeping out from the south edge of the landfill that was first identified by Dr Barbara Kneale.
She told The Blackpool Lead: “I first reported this issue to the EA in May this year at the time and had to report on two further occasions by online reporting, emailing the EA directly and phone calls. I asked that the liquid be tested.
“I am disappointed that it has taken so long for my complaint to be taken seriously. On my last contact I was told that they had not tested it earlier because they could not find the site of the leak despite me supplying a GPS coordinate, a map and an offer to meet them at the site to show them where it is as I live 5 mins away.
“However I am pleased that they are now testing the liquid which could be the release of leachate from the site and I eagerly await the results.”
Campaigners welcomed the acknowledgement that the testing carried out by Transwaste was being taken with a pinch of salt, but remain deeply frustrated that another summer of stink has amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist for the company.
Jess Brown, who manages the Action Against Jameson Road landfill group, said: “It just feels like they’re still giving them chance after chance and ignoring the health impacts it's having on people.
“They have the power, and enough evidence, to issue another suspension notice. That’s the only time that they end up getting their act together - when they’re losing money.”
The Blackpool Lead again asked a number of questions of Transwaste relating to the Environment Agency update and did not receive a response.
Action Against Jameson Road Landfill is hosting a community drop-in event at Senior Citizens Hall on Warrenhurst Road from 6pm-8pm on Friday, 17 October. Speakers will include a health professional, campaigners from other landfill sites and Lorraine Beavers, MP for Blackpool North and Fleetwood.
Relatives shown the wrong body at Blackpool Vic mortuary among new revelations after Valerie Kneale inquest
By Michael Holmes
Grieving relatives were led into the mortuary at Blackpool Victoria Hospital to say goodbye to their dead loved one and then shown the wrong body, it can be revealed.
The family members were “briefly” exposed to the incorrect corpse, which had been “mistakenly laid out for a viewing” after a worker got their names mixed up.
Meanwhile, in another howler that can today be made public, decaying radioactive waste material was apparently lost by workers in the under-fire hospital’s nuclear medicine department.
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