Mr Anthony Vaughan
c/o Mr Sion Charles
The Planning Inspectorate
Crown Buildings
Cathays Park
Cardiff
CF10 3ND
 

18/12/2000
 

Dear Mr Vaughan

I am greatly troubled by aspects of the Public Inquiry and I earnestly beg your indulgence in allowing me to make what I sincerely hope are constructive observations. I am not a member of a pressure group nor do I have any kind of involvement with Castle Cement.

I have come to the P.I. as an objector still looking for honest answers to serious questions and prepared to consider both sides of the argument.

However I do not know to whom I should address these questions that have arisen as the P.I. has progressed. Other members of the public have asked me similar questions that in no way have been satisfactory dealt with.

In your closing comments at the end of session (Thur. 2nd Nov.) you expressed puzzlement about the lack of local residents willing to come forward to put their case. I honestly see no mystery in this. I would personally rather walk 20 paces over hot coals than speak up in what is a debaters ‘bear pit’. Other residents have expressed similar sentiments and also singled out Mr Pugh for his unpleasantness.

The legal teams may thrive in this environment but for the rest of us, the prospect of ritual humiliation is just too stressful. No doubt Castles’ experts are paid handsomely for ‘running the gauntlet’ but many of the objectors are unskilled amateurs driven only by conscience and personal experience.

I have never previously attended a P.I. and although I could not attend the first two weeks I have personally found it at times riveting, educational and revealing and some times tedious, infuriating and extremely gruelling. At the end of some days I have felt exhausted (as a mere observer) just trying to take in all that I had heard. You have an exceptionally difficult and arduous task assessing the mountain of evidence presented by the many highly articulate experts in their field and seeing through the smokescreens of uncooperative witnesses.

I sincerely believe it is not just Castles application which is ‘on trial’ here but the whole ‘system’ as it appears to lurch from one disaster to another. Whether it is BSE/vCJD, rail accidents, the Chinook crash or other environmental disasters, there is a catalogue of ‘cover ups’ and failures and people have become extremely sceptical. Like BSE the health implications from Castles’ proposal will not be seen until the damage is done.

Politicians are utterly without credibility when they chirp ‘Pre-cautionary principal’ then hide behind their civil servants.

The ‘system’ in Flintshire is particularly blighted in this respect as it is widely accepted that the Waterhouse Inquiry into child abuse was not only late in its instigation but that suspect eminent figures in the ‘system’ remain in place or retired happy. The ‘system’ did however manage to sack the whistle blower.

I can almost hear you saying, as you have on many occasions, ‘these factors are outside the remit…’ but I feel certain that you genuinely believe in ‘the process’ and desire that the residents of Flintshire share your confidence. So please bear with me.

The many neighbours, friends and relations to whom I am ‘reporting back’ unfortunately regard the P.I. as window dressing. For instance, it is known that The Government has announced it intends to build 130 new incinerators by 2015. A few neighbours have said they are not prepared to ‘waste holidays on a futile exercise’ (or words to that effect). This is a common opinion but not one I share.

I believe the P.I. is a rare opportunity for justice to be ‘seen to be done’ and I have tried hard to convince the doubters of its merits. My faith however had been diminishing until that is; the redoubtable Mary Horner presented video and verbal evidence. Her accounts changed everything.

As a spectator one cannot help noticing the staggering inequality between the two factions. The industrial might of Heidleberger Zement versus the whip-rounds, car boot sales and raffles financing the pressure groups cannot be fair in a decent modern democracy. Dads’ Army against the SAS!

Those ordinary members of the public who have got involved have had to literally put their lives on hold, having neither the time or money to invest in an inquiry lasting months.

Some of the objectors’ cause is further hampered by their ineptitude and lack of skill in cross-examining hostile expert witnesses. Well intentioned though their questions are, endless repetition is unlikely to secure answers from some witnesses and I sense your growing impatience (understandable) as the case has progressed.

I had not realised until the end of Wed 22nd Nov. session that you had encountered Cllr Armstrong Braun at two previous P.I.’s. Indeed you know him better than I do.

Thankyou for assisting the unskilled parties such as Cllr Braun in obtaining answers to legitimate (if badly worded questions) from reluctant experts. At a single stroke you delivered up the answer to ‘co-incineration’ from a retreating Mr Thomas.

You repeated this feat when you recognised the nugget Cllr Braun was after from Dr Roberts (your last question Wed. 22nd Nov.). Most of his ‘arrows’ may be blunt but some are on target.

Like the inspirational Mr Hill, you asked the right questions.

The treatment Cllr Braun and other ‘ordinary people’ have received however serves as a cruel warning of what fate might befall them should they wade in. Mr Pugh’s frequent resort to publicly insulting witnesses has been offensive and only seems to hinder the cross-examination process.

It was particularly unworthy of Cllr Messham to use his time in the witness box to insult Cllr Braun. Cllr Braun would ‘try the patience of Job’ but the poor man has overcome very serious difficulties in life (not to mention his hearing handicap and speech impediment) to become a thorn in the side of the local system which people believe is otherwise largely unaccountable.

Also Cllr Messham’s claim that Buckley is equally divided on the matter is very hard to swallow. Castles application is by far the most unpopular proposal I have seen in the eighteen years my wife and I have lived in Broughton. The many friends and contacts I have around North East Wales assure me this hostility is consistent throughout the area including Chester and beyond.

I have seized many opportunities to canvas the opinion of ‘medics’ (Chemists, GP’s and Consultants) and their response has been at odds with Dr Roberts. They know of the claimed improvements of the new kiln but share the same acute mistrust of Castle and the regulators.

Oddly reluctant to go on record, their reply was usually along the lines of ‘Castle should have been stopped years ago’.

I would confidently invite you to seek the answer to public opinion by doing a ‘walk- about’ in the surrounding villages. Outside the P.I. no one knows your identity.

Mention cement kiln, incinerator or hazardous waste at any gathering of people in the area and by and large you will get one answer.

I beg you on behalf of us all try to get at the truth of this difficult subject.

Please imagine how difficult it has been, as a member of the public, to discover the extent of the known existing problems caused by kilns 1,2&3 let alone the projected problems of an untried system and burning an unknown cocktail of hazardous waste. Indeed only through the P.I. have the health implications of Castles’ past emissions become public knowledge. In the many hours I have spent with the Environment Agency they have studiously avoided revealing anything unpleasant about Castles’ activities, past, present or future.
 

Most surprisingly, Flintshire’s elected representatives to the Assembly and Parliament refuse to recognise the depth of opposition. Their sponsorship deals with Unions involved in this case seem to be more important than their obligations to their constituents.

Earlier in the P.I. I wrote to you enclosing copies of correspondence to the CMOH Dr Roberts listing shortcomings in his methods and procedure and accusing him of bias. Nothing Dr Roberts said during his cross-examination convinced me he was trying to safe guard our health or persuaded me to reconsider my opinion of his role in this application. Pre-cautionary principal was hardly mentioned in his evidence and his grasp of the subject seemed weak compared to Dr Howard’s.

The coincidence of ‘cancer increases/clusters’ within air drainage and wind direction patterns (as opposed to concentric circles) is certainly a question that deserved more respect from Dr Roberts. As far as I am concerned Dr Roberts raised more questions than he answered.

For instance:

? Why did he give Dr Kelly privileged information well before everyone else?
? Does he accept that this gives the impression to the public that he is biased to Castle Cements case?
? Does he think that this is acceptable conduct for a Public Health Officer?
? How big does a cancer cluster have to be to matter to Dr Roberts and the Dept. Health
? Why did he not conduct the full Health Impact Assessment deemed to be a pre-requisite for other health authorities e.g. Westbury, Wilts. and Newbridge-on-Wye?
? Why did his safety margins not include the highly likely incidence of plant failure and illegal emissions? There was too much evidence to ignore.
? Or take account of the health impact of the substantial increase in road traffic delivering the hazardous waste, given what we are learning about diesel emissions?

Like many people at the inquiry I was mesmerised by the optimism of Castles’ landscape expert Mr Moggeridge, that a few quick growing Hollies might mitigate the visual impact of the new kiln. I found his reply quite ridiculous.

I worked as a landscape architects’ assistant 1966~1970 at Runcorn New Town but made a career change to Art and Design/3D Ceramics/Art Education when I realised the visual reward for my landscape designs would not materialise for at least a decade or more. This was indeed the case. A good fifteen years had elapsed before my planting schemes had any substantial effect on the houses and highways they had been designed to mitigate and these schemes included very fast growing species like Poplar and Willow.

At a growth rate of 1.5ft. per. year, it would require 10-20 years for planting to offer any mitigation on existing low structures. Unless planted very close to the viewer no tree has the capability to disguise the new kiln within its working lifetime.

Now 30 years down the line Halton Brook, Halton Lodge and Castlefields Estates, Town Centre Roundabout and Expressway to Preston Brook for which I was responsible do look very pleasing, but 30 years is the entire projected life of the kiln.

The new kiln will be visible for as far as atmospheric conditions permit for many miles around and no tree on earth could conceal it.

Dr Max Wallace was the first atmosphere/weather expert I had seen giving evidence and I wanted his opinion on the shortcomings of Castles’ air modelling. However you would not allow me to ask him about these shortcomings (I understand why).

After many hours of observation I am now completely satisfied that plume grounding does already occur in Broughton. When the wind is in the Broughton direction eddy currents on the leeward side of Warren Hill cause the plume to descend. My wife and I close all windows to keep out a strong odour of sulphurous emissions from a point source that can only be Castle Cement. This can occur every two to seven days and last a few hours or several days.

? Why on earth was Castles’ air modelling based on meteorological data from a flat, windswept floodplain of the Mersey Estuary many miles away and 400ft. lower than Padeswood?
? How can anyone consider this data seriously when it is nearly 30 years (1973?) out of date and when we are experiencing the wettest winter in history and dramatic climate change?
? During periods of low atmospheric pressure the existing chimneys are often surrounded by cloud base. What percentage of the year is the plume trapped by low cloud?

Letters to the inquiry itself may well number 300(?)~for and 600(?)~against, but I have heard it said twice from reliable sources within the Assembly administration, once last spring and again on the 14th Nov. that ‘a huge deluge’ of letters, faxes, emails and petitions, is what brought about the P.I. in the first place. 25,000 was the figure mentioned last spring by a female who has become completely ‘unavailable’ despite my repeated attempts to contact her in a new department. I know she still works at Cathays Park (someone let that slip) but I cannot help feeling some suspicion of obstruction. I am particularly concerned that I was passed around several departments and both headquarters before I managed to winkle ‘huge deluge’ out of a reticent planner. I am reluctant to publicly name either the planner or administrator for fear of them suffering retribution but their identities should not be difficult to establish.

If democracy has any real meaning the wishes of such a large number of people must surely form a central pillar of the debate with clear repercussions for politicians both local and national.

The character and the quality of the witnesses has spoken volumes. Their candour and honesty, or lack of, was often conspicuous. Mary Horner, particularly was outstanding ~ a humble farmers wife with a mastery of the subject rivalled by few professionals. Her ‘first hand experience’ evidence was compelling and a bleak forecast of what the future may hold. In respect of some witnesses it has been a privilege to watch great intellects at work.

Without the Public Inquiry Castle Cement may well have continued to flout emission laws unhindered and unknown to those people living in areas of the fall-out zone worst effected. Now at least they are not ignorant. What damage has already been done, despite Dr Roberts’s assurances, is a question which will rumble on long after the Inquiry has concluded.

Many sincere thanks to you and the Assessor for undertaking the enormous task of inspecting this Inquiry; no doubt your lives also have been disrupted.
 

Yours Sincerely

Andrew Mack

P.S.
What started out as a letter six weeks ago has almost become a diary