Oh dear! George Monbiot's not buying the official line
It's been denied as the cause, with little data as far as I can see, and blamed on an undetected algal bloom. The entire Tees estuary must be heavily contaminated after 150 years of constant, heavy pollution.Hasn't the freeport thing and the pyridine thing already been ruled out (well explained away) or is this based on something new?
The below article from February was amended removing the link to the freeport, so has something changed?Houtchen said ages ago that it's nothing to do with dredging and man-made pollution as he's a toxicology and marine life expert, so that's alright .
But it has been constantly dredged?It's been denied as the cause, with little data as far as I can see, and blamed on an undetected algal bloom. The entire Tees estuary must be heavily contaminated after 150 years of constant, heavy pollution.
It's explained in the article. TL/DR - deeper 'new' dredging for the freeport is releasing 'old' pollution deposits which are being dumped at sea.But it has been constantly dredged?
They're out there all the time, especially if anything big is going into the Able dock/port.
Is anything happening with the decommissioning on the British Steel site that is dumping stuff into the river?
The river is less 'industrial' than it has ever been in the past (well since the industrial revolution probably), seems odd to be causing a major issue now?.
That was corrected in the article I posted wasn't it?It's explained in the article. TL/DR - deeper 'new' dredging for the freeport is releasing 'old' pollution deposits which are being dumped at sea.
There has been no deeper dredging for the freeports, the freeport status is a set of import/export and financial rules, not vessel size related? The actual port will be the same?
Cheers Johnny, that is good info. So how have they got away with stating it wasn't linked to the Freeport?A dredger started work in the mouth of the Tees at the end of September, deepening the channel. Deere-Jones’s hypothesis is that the dredger inadvertently exposed contaminated mud. This was then dumped at the legal disposal sites farther offshore. The currents flowing southwards, he believes, spread these sediments down the coast. As pyridine attaches itself to particles that fall to the seabed, and accumulates up the food chain, it is likely disproportionately to affect bottom-living scavengers such as lobsters and crabs.
The government’s insistence that chemical pollution was not responsible might seem hard to understand. But consider this. In July, work begins on the Teesside freeport, the biggest and most spectacular of the government’s fabled “Brexit opportunities”. The project is being overseen by the Conservatives’ favourite mayor, Ben Houchen.
Constructing the Tees freeport will require a massive dredging operation. To enable ships to dock at the new South Bank Quay in the Tees estuary, a crucial component of the freeport, the channel needs to be deepened from 9m to 13m, and the “berth pocket”, where the vessels moor, to almost 16m. This means excavating historic sediments that are likely to contain the chemical legacy of Teesside’s old industries. Questions have been raised about whether these sediments have been properly tested before dredging begins. If they turn out to be highly contaminated, the expense of removing them safely could be prohibitive.
Freeports have been a magnet for money-laundering, tax evasion, corruption, smuggling, counterfeiting, drug trafficking and terrorist money flows. Just before the government launched its consultation proposing 10 freeports in the United Kingdom, Brussels announced that it was clamping down on freeports in the European Union. This helps the UK to consolidate its position as the world’s financial entrepot for organised crime, now a major sector of our economy.
Metals are pretty easy to detect down to parts per billion with modern techniques.The pyridine theory doesn't seem to add up. Pyridine is pretty easy to detect so I think its very likely to have been picked. My guess would be heavy metals would only need tiny amounts and would be a lot harder to detect at the minute levels needed.
I think that's the main point of free ports. No scrutiny.I find this all deeply concerning, especially if the new port area is beyond scrutiny and beyond the law.
I suspect same as is doing the classic Brexit trick of flat out lying here. It's actually sad to see, this meltdown. Such a shame he can't jsut admit he was fooled, and move on. Instead he gets ever more desperate and unhinged to try and defend the monumental failure that is BrexitYou would rather be in a grouping currently financially backing Putin, because a right wing sectarian country known as Hungary tells them to.
Not for me
I back from holiday, France, Portugal and Spain. I was never asked for my passport, I was never asked for confirmation of COVID and they accepted my money. Not much change there. I speak Spanish badly so chatted to a restaurant owner. He says there has been no reduction in British trade. A trade he needs as we spend the money. He jokingly said he would rather have one British family than 10 Dutch. I guess he is a racist.
I do this sort of thing for a living the quantities of some metals needed to kill some sea life will be a lot less than parts per billion.Metals are pretty easy to detect down to parts per billion with modern techniques.