The Oxfordshire-based company said that the inclusion of the facility on a list of global list of persistent organic pollutant (POP) hot-spots, in a conference paper presented by consultant Alan Watson earlier this month, was based on “no evidence at all”.
The Wingmoor Farm landfill facility, at Bishops Cleeve, has operated for over 10 years taking both hazardous and non-hazardous waste from a number of non-household sources, including air pollution control (APC) residues from energy-from-waste plants.
The facility also takes residues from the combustion processes used in glass recycling and chicken litter combustion.
Unique
Outlining his reasons for including the facility on his list of POP hot-spots, Mr Watson claimed the site was “unique” due to being “by far the largest” single site in the UK to be used for the disposal of hazardous and contaminated incinerator ash.
In the list he presented, Mr Watson claimed that, as a result of the way waste was treated at the site, “offsite exposure may be occurring through APC residues blowing off site where they can be inhaled or contaminate food and soil.”
And, he said: “Wingmoor Farm is a major dioxin hotspot – comparable with many of the worst contaminated sites around the world.
“The Stockholm Convention promised to eliminate these extremely dangerous chemicals and the Government should make urgent steps to honour that commitment,” he added.
Evidence
However, in response to Mr Watson's claims, Grundon said: “Watson's paper was presented without any peer group review, with no third party (or any other) technical references and no data evaluation. In other words, with no evidence at all to support the inclusion of Wingmoor Farm on the map.”
It added: “While we fully understand the concerns of local communities living near landfill sites, we strongly believe that the inclusion of the Wingmoor Farm site in this report is based on nothing more than innuendo and supposition. It does not help anyone to understand what is really happening at the site.”
Process
A spokeswoman for the company explained that Grundon's process for treating APC residues involves them being “directly discharged” from silos into a tanker which was then moved onto the site, where it is then discharged into silos to be blended with leachate.
The slurry produced by this process is then discharged from the bottom of a hopper into “dedicated” cells in the landfill, she said.
And, she added that: “We do a lot of monitoring ourselves but there's also been cross-sectoral industry monitoring – not just in the waste industry – all of which have come up with nothing at all.”
Grundon's planning consent to continue landfilling at Wingmoor Farm expired on May 12, however, the company submitted an application before then to continue its activities at the site for what is believed to be another 20 years.
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