Contaminated silt banned at Rame Head will be dumped at new Devon site
By C_Becquart | Posted: March 07, 2017
Campaigners have won an unprecedented victory to stop dredgers dumping silt next to a marine beauty spot.
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) announced that dumping will no longer be allowed off Rame Head in Whitsand Bay.
Instead the agency has designated a new disposal site in deeper water nine kilometres southwest of Plymouth Sound breakwater.
The Rame Head site has been used for more than 100 years to dispose of silt dredged from the Tamar and the Cattewater in Plymouth.
More than six million tonnes of spoil – mainly dredged from the River Tamar to enable the passage of ships to Devonport Dockyard – have been dumped over the past 30 years alone.
Diver Dave Peake, from the Stop Dumping in Whitsand Bay group, was one of the first to highlight the problem, with photographs of silt-covered sea life in the Whitsand and Looe Bay Marine Conservation Zone, which borders the dump site.
In 2014 the MMO temporarily halted dumping after the group launched a judicial review against the granting of a licence to do so. Last year, after Millbrook man Tonny Steenhagen launched a second judicial review of the latest licence, the MMO began a search for a new dump zone.
Dredgers are expected to start work later this month but Mr Steenhagen was celebrating the news that they will have to take the silt farther offshore.
"It's a massive victory for the environment and for community power," Mr Steenhagen said. "There was always a core group involved, but when we needed to rally the troops people turned up in the pouring rain.
"When we needed to fund-raise to pay for legal action, the response was enormous. Our MP, Sheryll Murray, was part of the active campaign until 2010 but I feel she could have taken a more prominent stance locally to continue to promote the issue."
He added: "This campaign has set a precedent. Nobody in the UK has ever challenged a dump site before."
Mr Peake, who started the campaign 20 years ago and showed that silt was coming inshore, welcomed the news. "Whitsand Bay just wasn't the right place to have a disposal site," he said. "Some might argue that we shouldn't be dumping at sea at all, but if we have no alternative, it shouldn't be next to a marine conservation zone.
"This decision is good for the bay and for local people."
The new site is near the Western Channel Observatory's L4 scientific buoy, operated by Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML).
The MMO said PML was now happy after initial fears about the impact.
etc...
http://www.cornwalllive.com/contami...w-devon-site/story-30183883-detail/story.html
By C_Becquart | Posted: March 07, 2017
Campaigners have won an unprecedented victory to stop dredgers dumping silt next to a marine beauty spot.
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) announced that dumping will no longer be allowed off Rame Head in Whitsand Bay.
Instead the agency has designated a new disposal site in deeper water nine kilometres southwest of Plymouth Sound breakwater.
The Rame Head site has been used for more than 100 years to dispose of silt dredged from the Tamar and the Cattewater in Plymouth.
More than six million tonnes of spoil – mainly dredged from the River Tamar to enable the passage of ships to Devonport Dockyard – have been dumped over the past 30 years alone.
Diver Dave Peake, from the Stop Dumping in Whitsand Bay group, was one of the first to highlight the problem, with photographs of silt-covered sea life in the Whitsand and Looe Bay Marine Conservation Zone, which borders the dump site.
In 2014 the MMO temporarily halted dumping after the group launched a judicial review against the granting of a licence to do so. Last year, after Millbrook man Tonny Steenhagen launched a second judicial review of the latest licence, the MMO began a search for a new dump zone.
Dredgers are expected to start work later this month but Mr Steenhagen was celebrating the news that they will have to take the silt farther offshore.
"It's a massive victory for the environment and for community power," Mr Steenhagen said. "There was always a core group involved, but when we needed to rally the troops people turned up in the pouring rain.
"When we needed to fund-raise to pay for legal action, the response was enormous. Our MP, Sheryll Murray, was part of the active campaign until 2010 but I feel she could have taken a more prominent stance locally to continue to promote the issue."
He added: "This campaign has set a precedent. Nobody in the UK has ever challenged a dump site before."
Mr Peake, who started the campaign 20 years ago and showed that silt was coming inshore, welcomed the news. "Whitsand Bay just wasn't the right place to have a disposal site," he said. "Some might argue that we shouldn't be dumping at sea at all, but if we have no alternative, it shouldn't be next to a marine conservation zone.
"This decision is good for the bay and for local people."
The new site is near the Western Channel Observatory's L4 scientific buoy, operated by Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML).
The MMO said PML was now happy after initial fears about the impact.
etc...
http://www.cornwalllive.com/contami...w-devon-site/story-30183883-detail/story.html