Residents recall late-night waste dumping at historic tips near Sutton

Helen Brewin, aged 64, lived in Lower Somercotes, close to Norman Road, through the 1960s and ’70s, when the tips were operating.

She recalls the distinct smell of the substances being dumped in the landfills, before and during the years in which they were licensed by Derbyshire Council.

Ms Brewin said industrial activity in the area started closer to Stanley Street and then worked its way around to land off Norman Road, before curving around to the current Amber Valley Rugby Club site – the landfill sites LS01 and LS41, along with a third known as LOM.

She spoke out after your Chad reported how two residents on Birchwood Lane, Somercotes, had been hospitalised after becoming unwell in April within weeks of work starting on housing sites adjacent to the former landfills.

National health and local council officials are investigating, but have so far not found a connection between the historic contamination in the locality and reports of illnesses.

Playground

Ms Brewin said: “That whole area used to be one of my playgrounds, from Somercotes through Pye Bridge and across to Ironville, Jubilee and Pennytown Ponds. We just wandered all over it.

“There were huge piles of loose rocks and white shale and they felt like mountains to us. We would climb up and then run down the other side and watch the workers, but keep our distance.

“There were huge holes in the ground which became huge pools of water and in the centre there was a big pile of barrels which were all different colours, blue, orange, red, yellow, green and some had burst open, some had cracked and some did not have lids on, some were badly dented – it was the same at the rugby club ground.

“We would sometimes stand by the edge of the pools, but would never go in. Even then we knew that was a bad idea. It smelled rancid and there was a slimy film on the top of it, almost like if there is petrol or diesel on the top, but different. It was a horrible chemical smell, even worse than the sewage plant.”

Ms Brewin recalls a time in her youth when she had gone to use the tap on the family’s outdoor washhouse, which had always produced fresh water, only to find that when she turned it on, thicker liquid came out with a similar slimy iridescent film on it.

She recalls this started four or five years after companies started dumping barrels at the nearby landfills.

She and her friends would also hear lorries driving up nearby Norman Road during the night.

Evidence

Anecdotal evidence, as well as newspaper archives dating back to the 1970s, details residents speaking about lorries driving up Norman Road at night to dump waste into the landfills.

When the tips were licensed, they had restrictions to dump specific hazardous waste and industrial materials until 5pm, the original county council licences show.

Peter Brewster, age 74, of Bonnington Drive, said he was a lorry driver before retirement and had helped transport coal out of the nearby Smotherfly opencast facility.

Mr Brewster said waste was supposed to be encased with several metres of clay, but claims the waste, including the lorries, was just back-filled with soil and other materials.

This account matches other allegations over the past 50 years, with late-night tipping of hazardous waste from across the UK and depositing of waste from the 1968 Coalite chemical works explosion in Bolsover said to have been carried out in Somercotes – the 1968 explosion left 79 people with cysts known as chloracne.

Robert Kerr, who has lived in Lower Somercotes for about 50 years, also recalls visiting the former landfill.

He said: “You would walk up Norman Road and it would be like looking down a canyon and I remember people there telling me how they would often see men in white overalls dumping waste into the landfills. There is so much toxic stuff in there, it is horrendous.”

Mr Kerr also believes dioxin waste was dumped into the landfills.

The former employee of civil engineering firm Cammack, which operated in the Clay Cross and Dunstan area, says he worked around Somercotes in 1978 when the landfills were in operation.

The former engineer, who declined to be named, said his brother-in-law drove one of the vehicles which transported toxic waste from Coalite in Bolsover to the Somercotes landfill, next to what is now Amber Valley Rugby Club.

He said: “I am adamant is the area which is creating a lot of fuss and illness in Somercotes. I was astonished years later to see this area landscaped and sport being played on it.

“I went to this tip several times to work on the machinery and was advised not to go into certain areas for my own safety and health.

“I can assure you, and all your fellow persons who are involved with this situation, there are toxic substances buried there and as soon as any footings are dug out, who knows what will come forth.

“As an ex-employee of Cammack we were advised by those who were employed at this Somercotes tip in the 1970s to be wary, because they knew it was dangerous stuff they were burying, although I doubt if they knew the exact truth and what substance it was.

“What I do recall, is that a mechanical shovel (from the Somercotes landfill) was repaired at the Dunstan workshops and when sent out to the site I was advised not to go near the ‘hole’ and to work as far away as possible and to ensure my overalls and clothes are washed when I finished.”

Recollection

An elderly Lower Somercotes resident, who did not want to be identified, said he vividly recalls the operation of the LS01 landfill and said he had seen men in white suits tipping materials into the historic tip at night in the 70s.

LS01, run by Cambro Contractors, operated from 1973 until 1980, with an estimated 625,000 tonnes of waste dumped during its lifespan, including produce tipped before and after the licence was issued.

Official reports from the 1990s said many substances found on the site are known to be carcinogenic and at least partially radioactive.

Council officials since then have disclosed undocumented waste was tipped in the site for decades before records began.

The dumps had operated during a time when there were less stringent restrictions on what could and should be disposed of – and how to contain it.

There was an aim to tie this up with the Control of Pollution Act in 1974.

This had also followed the 1972 Deposit of Poisonous Wastes Act – before which there was no restriction on where or how to dump hazardous materials and no requirement to keep records of their disposal.

In 1977, Derbyshire Council issued a licence for LS01, allowing dozens of tonnes of 23 different forms of hazardous waste to be dumped on the site. This includes asbestos, tar, toxic metal compounds, industrial effluent treatment sludge, cleaning up waste from oil refineries, aromatic hydrocarbons, mercury-contaminated compounds, mineral oil sludges, alkaline cleaners, fats, greases and much more.