Incredible to believe that it has been four years since this blog was first started and the long thought buried secrets of an Oldbury chemical company and its toxic tip began to leak on the internet after decades of fake smoke cover.
Back at the start of 2013 there were works planned to start to install a geotextile membrane in the larger lagoon and we attended an open day event where Rhodia and their contractors tried to spin their “improvement works” to local residents.
Of course after 14 years of trying to get to what was causing the bird deaths, we were extremely sceptical about anything they were trying to peddle. We still are.
The works were tailored to suit rhodia’s closure plan for the site, a legal requirement which has seen a slight alteration to their existing hazardous waste site licence.
The lagoon itself has certainly undergone visual changes above the surface, but retains the feature of “what lies beneath”. Gone are the reed beds where many dying birds gasped their last desperate breaths and which became their final resting place. Gone are the pontoons and discharge pipes where Albright and Wilson and Rhodia poisoned the environment and wildlife with their cheap and unsafe disposal method.
Wildfowl rarely visit the site now, and the odds of seeing a swan on there appear to be at there lowest since I started monitoring wildfowl 20 years ago. But too late for the many that perished, and the prospect of whatever transpires with what happens in and around this site still continues to threaten the entire area with an inevitable quick cheap fix solution, such as filling it all in with foundry sand.
Whatever the future, and though the technology of doing so may change, it will be recorded for posterity, because the camera never lies.
