Osboro
Well-known member
Cast your mind back to the early years of Riverside. Remember the white tents and piles of " soil" by Middlesbrough Dock.( where the offices and restaurants are now)Exactly. The point is though, where's the risk assessment? If you dug up the land of an old chemical plant without pausing to consider the potential knock-on effects of contamination and you ended up killing thousands of animals, you'd potentially be facing a jail sentence. Everyone knows how our river was badly polluted in the past 150 years or so, it's hardly a well-kept secret, so who gave the ok to disturb the bed of the Tees on such a scale without pause to consider the environmental effects?
This was a process to clean out the heavy metals and pollution that had settled in the Dock itself ( not the river channel.)
Whilst the south bank wharf,( between West Byng upriver to Smiths Dock)was never a closed tidal Dock ( unlike middlesbrough dock) it was essentially unused since the mid 1970s, occasionally used as a lay by berth for small coasters. Little or no dredging occurred allowing sediment to lay undisturbed. It is this material that was dumped in the Tees bay designated spoil areas. Why was this not treated the same as middlesbrough dock dredged materials.ie Processed and cleaned rather than dumped at sea in the same manner as everyday " natural" regularly dredged material from the shipping channel.????