what a company, eh? kind of a shining light on the hill for unbridled capitalism and big agricorps.
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original-the ecologistEXCLUSIVE: How the Environment Agency is gagging the one eyewitness to what is potentially the biggest environmental crime to occur in the UK. An Ecologist special investigation by
Jon Hughes and
Pat Thomas Date: 22/03/2007 Author:Jon Hughes & Pat Thomas
The Environment Agency (EA) is within weeks of letting Monsanto escape its liability for knowingly dumping thousands of tonnes of cancer-causing chemicals – including all the ingredients of the DDT defoliant Agent Orange – in two quarries in Wales. Unless a claim and ‘adversary action’ is lodged with the US bankruptcy courts (USBC) within around four weeks, the UK taxpayer faces picking up a bill for hundreds of millions of pounds to safeguard the environment and public health. Yet for the past few months the Agency has stonewalled the one remaining eyewitness to events as they unfolded in 1967 onwards, and who is prepared to speak out. This man, who now carries a panic button at all times, also has a dedicated police protection officer supervising protective devices installed at his house because of the threats that he has received.
From 1967 to1974, Douglas Gowan represented farmers in the Taff area of South Wales, primarily as a legal adviser with an expertise in toxicology, having first gone to the area to investigate mysterious cattle and sheep deaths, and the abortions occurring in livestock, as a field officer for the National Farmers Union (NFU). He traced the likely cause of the deaths and abortions back to the Monsanto chemical plant in nearby Newport, where significant amounts of waste were being hauled daily to a nearby limestone landfill site operated by Purle Brothers.
The Monsanto plant, having been exposed for dumping thousands of tonnes of chemical wastes into the River Severn and public waterways and sewerage system, was now dumping its wastes in Brofiscin Quarry, and Maendy Quarry, which are sited above the farms where the mysterious livestock deaths were occurring. Documents seen by the Ecologist and shared by Gowan with the EA say that as much as 80,000 tonnes of waste contaminated by chlorinated hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were dumped into Brofiscin Quarry, and 42,000 tonnes into Maendy Quarry.
Tests commissioned by Gowan and the NFU between 1968 and 1974 revealed these wastes to include at least 12 types of PCBs, marketed as Aroclor: tetrachlorophenol; pentachlorophenol; naphthalene; benzene; dioxin; dibenzofurans; and other carcinogens. Samples were shared with the relevant authorities, including the Department of the Environment; Glamorgan River Authority; the Government Chemist; Ministry of Agriculture; and Welsh Office, and were undertaken by ICI Laboratories in Brixham; Pick Everard Keay and Gimson in Leicester; the Royal Veterinary College; and the National Water Quality Laboratory in Duluth, USA. All these documents and reports are now reportedly missing.
Much of the evidence Gowan secured formed the basis of a three-year Sunday Times Insight investigation and helped cause a subsequent change in the law through the Control of Pollution Act 1974.
The late 60s and early 70s were a difficult time for Monsanto. Its main PCB production plant in Anniston, Alabama, had been exposed for routinely dumping and flushing away thousands of tonnes of PCB wastes into the public waterways and holes in the ground. Monsanto was forced to release thousands of documents revealing that the company had known the public health risks from these compounds – which were used in the manufacture of paper, paints, electrical conductors, capacitors, and transformers – for around 30 years. The production process meant that as much as 25 per cent of the chemicals used in the process often ended up as a spill, residue or as waste.
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