Lindane
dumped in stream
A pumping station that delivers drinking water to a
million people in south east England had be shut down in June after a drum
containing the insecticide lindane was found in a stream. About 10 kg of powder
was discovered in an open drum in Wateringbury stream near Maidstone Kent on
Monday 23 June. But it was only confirmed as lindane, a persistent
organochlorine, on the Wednesday afternoon after a series of laboratory tests.
At 2.30 pm that afternoon, Southern Water closed its Maidstone pumping
station.
Dozens of dead fish were recovered from the stream, and, by
the Friday, an emergency clean-up operation was underway. An Environment Agency
spokesman said the likely cause was "mindless vandalism."
Daily Telegraph, 28 June 1997.
Leak into
watercourse
An Essex company, John Mansfield Timber has been
find £6,000 (US $9,600) for polluting a brook with a timber preservative. A
spillage was thought to have been contained within a bund, but the bund was
unlined and the preservative seeped into the watercourse, poisoning fish and
invertebrates.
ENDS, No. 269, June 1997.
Dow
fined for herbicide spill
Dow Chemical was fined £2,000 (US $3,200) in June
for a herbicide spill which polluted a Norfolk stream. The Environment Agency
blamed the incident on poor site management. In July 1996, Dow reported a
herbicide leak at its King Lynn works. A leaking container of fluroxpyr had been
placed in a storage area which staff believed to be isolated from surface water
drains. In fact the drains led into a North Lynn Drain tributary.
Agency inspectors found that the watercourse contained up to
21.5 mg/l of the herbicide.
ENDS, No. 269, June 1997.
Dichlobenil
contamination
The Environment Agency was also called in when
South West Water found the herbicide dichlobenil entering its Littlehempston
treatment works. Officers found that the weedkiller had been applied to a farm
pond from where it had made its way into the River Dart.|
A leak in the pond was sealed but the Agency said a
large amount of the dichlobenil in the pond would take about six months to
degrade naturally. Indications were that river life had not been affected.
Environment Action, June/July 1997.
[This
article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 37,
September 1997, page 17]