EA’s Droppingwell response ‘a breathtaking piece of legalese,’ says Rotherham Council leader

The groundwater test area known as BH05 lies on council land beside the proposed tipping site at Kimberworth where Grange Landfill Ltd hoped to tip up to 205,000 tonnes of waste a year.

BH05 was installed without council permission in 2016 – and has been inactive since being damaged the following year.

But there have been mixed messages from the EA about whether data from the borehole is a necessary part of reopening the tip, which was closed over public health fears in the 1990s.

The council’s position had been that monitoring was desirable because – should the tip become active again – more information will be known about any potential groundwater pollution.

Conversely, campaigners have argued that RMBC should do nothing to accommodate any testing which might help lead to tipping resuming.

This included independent Cllr Ian Jones’ November 2023 motion – calling for RMBC to deny permission to reinstate BH05 on council land. But the ruling Labour group went against and the motion failed.

Cllr Chris Read later revealed that the EA had advised in 2020 and 2022 that BH05 was not a requirement of the permit – in effect that it did not matter whether the council allowed BH05 or not as the operation could continue unaffected.

Further correspondence from the EA early this year saw this position both reiterated and contradicted in the same letter.

The council took further legal advice earlier this year and, on July 3, submitted a formal complaint to the EA over its “repeated failures” to clarify its position on BH05.

RMBC said this had resulted in the council being unable to properly discharge its duties – such as not having the full information when voting on Cllr Jones’ motion.

Droppingwell Action Group, with whom Cllr Jones campaigns, pointed out in February that recent EA compliance reports on Droppingwell stated: “We require that BH05 be reinstalled prior to disposal activities commencing on site.”

But when RMBC took this to the EA, the response was that the council could be “legally obliged” to allow the borehole to be redrilled on its land if it tried to deny permission.

The EA confirmed that its response to the council’s complaint was sent on August 6 but declined to comment further.

Its letter, seen by the Advertiser, was from EA area environment manager Peter Stevenson. He wrote that BH05 was required by the conditions of the EA permit variation, which was granted in 2016 without consultation.

But he also said: “There are other boreholes around the site which would determine if there was any significant impact upon groundwater from the activities at the site.”

The current absence of BH05 is a permit breach, the letter confirmed, but the EA does not plan to take enforcement action because no waste is currently being taken to the site, so “potential risk to the environment from this breach is low.”

Mr Stevenson concluded: “Whilst there appears to be some confusion caused by the statement that ‘failure to reinstate BH05 is not critical in terms of permit regulation’, it is my conclusion that the Environment Agency has not misled RMBC or changed its legal position regarding BH05.”

Cllr Read said: “The Environment Agency’s response is a breathtaking piece of legalese that only further reduces any confidence anyone can have in their regulation of the site.

“Presented with evidence that they were giving two contradictory messages at the same time, they simply deny it.

“I shall be taking this matter further.”