The wasteland: how years of secret chemical dumping left a toxic legacy [Monsanto pollutes UK]

[derby378]

The old toxic waste dump at Brofiscin quarry smells of sick when it rains and the small brook that flows from it gushes a vivid orange.

Barton Williams, its owner, says he had no idea exactly what lies below his land, or how dangerous it is. "It's leaking, isn't it? It's the wrong colour. They haven't told me what's in there. The Environment Agency hasn't been open about what's in it at all and the council didn't even tell me it was toxic waste when I bought the land. They only told the public three years ago."

He remembers tankers dumping drums, slurry and sludge from the Monsanto chemical works in Newport and elsewhere in the 36-metre deep quarry on the edge of Groesfaen village near Cardiff. "They just tipped it in, anything really. They were lax in those days."

Groesfaen, now a Cardiff commuter village, is full of recently built £250,000 executive homes - some right on the edge of the quarry. Today, the many newcomers know little of the scale or nature of the dumping of carcinogenic and other chemical waste between 1965 and 1972. The tip, which was unlined, never had a licence for chemical dumping and water pollution was forbidden.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,2011156,00.html