Has anyone on list had experience of contractors decontaminating land? We are buying a parcel of land, part of which was once used as a coal yard, so there is the odd bit of coal still lying arround, not much but definately some. Planning permission has been granted for a barn conversion, but is conditional on a contamination survey, ( inc soil, soil gas, surface and ground water sampling) the be carried out by 'a suitably qualified and accredited consultant/contractor..' At the end of the day it is only a few bits of coal, maybe a few hundredweight spread over an acre or so, but somthing is going to have to be sacrified to the local planning gods and some form of decontamination process carried out.
If you buy the land, you become legally responsible for decontaminating it, which you have to do.
Sainsbury's bought a large plot in Wheathamstead (Herts) for a superstore, on which they didn't get planning permission. Then it was discovered to be contaminated (was the development site for Murphy's Chemicals in the 1950's and 1960's). Sainsbury's then had to fork out 10 times the cost of the land to have it decontaminated. Half of it now has a housing estate on it (I bet they don't have too many problems with insects and slugs in their vegetable patches;-), and the other half has got to run as reed bed for 25 years (at least) to continue the decontamination.
At the public exhibition, I heard one of the Sainsbury's staff say the person who bought the land for Sainsbury's and believed it to have been decontanimated without having it thoroughly tested first was fired.
Hi Andrew(s), Interesting to come across this update on the Wheathamsted Sainsburys application - for which I too attended one of the store's public meeting attempts to convince the villagers that they desperately needed a superstore.
Murphy's was, I think, a pretty exceptionally contaminated site though: I recall a meeting with an NRA officer, where he was of the opinion that just a bucket of 'soil' from the site getting into the River Lea nearby, could wipe out life for miles down stream!
Shame that the houses that were built instead, are so out of character with the village centre not far away though.
As for the 'coal yard', it rather depends on what the coal yard was for: if it was part of a gas works for example, there could be all manner of nasty residues present - sulphuric acid - coal tar/phenolic compounds, and so on. Even just a pile of 'coal' could be quite acid if there was any amount of iron pyrite in for example, as this 'rusts' to give off sulphuric acid, which rain would then wash down into the soil. One has to wonder, how your 'few hundredweight' got to be 'spread out over an acre or so': could be a lot more than just coal 'levelled' into your plot by whoever prepared the land following its previous use.
You should look at the whole history of the site in question and thus get yourself a better idea of the kind of contamination that might be present. You may also find that your planning authority turns out to be the best people to advise on both this and any remediation that might be required as they have I believe, been required to compile data on sites likely to be contaminated, that fall within their area.
Umm... As the owner of the adjoining farmland I have an interest:-)
The NRA may well have known more than they said. When the local domestic waste site (Blackbridge tip) was closed around 1965, Murphies created an earth bunded liquid waste tip at the end of their site. I have no idea what wastes were disposed there and this part of the site was not decontaminated prior to being developed for housing. All surface water is collected and fed via an enormous concrete duct to the reed beds and thence to the river Lea.
Currently test bore holes are being installed around the old Berk chemical works at Sandridge following the contamination of the Three Valleys Water borehole at Hatfield.
With regard to Andrew's enquiry, I thought that the *polluter pays* legislation fixed the responsibility with the current owner at the time of the enactment and that you can't escape responsibility by selling?
No personal experience, but as a matter of interest;
My mate worked in a small factory unit next to the old Vickers Armament factory in Crayford, Kent, which was about to be demolished, having been empty for years.
He became chatty with the site foreman. A few days after they started demolition, they stopped work. It had suddenly occured to them that there was no sound or movement in the dissused building, no rats, no birds etc.
Turned out to be knee deep in heavy metals or something of that ilk. Whatever it was, they stopped work immediately & the decontaminating people moved in. Took about 6 months apparently, cost the developer a fortune. Now a business park c/w McDonalds.
The exhibition I went to was for the decontamination planning. I was working in No 4 Place Farm at the time, literally a stone's throw from what is now the reed bed. When they were scraping off the top layer of the ground to be taken off to a very high temperature incinerator, the stench was so bad I went home.
They said it was the most contaminated site in the South (or South East, I forget).
Lots of villagers recalled a fire at the Murphys site in the
1960's IIRC. After it burned for a couple of days, apparently they dug a big pit, bulldozed everything in, and bulldozed the soil back in on top to put the fire out. The analysis of the site revealed lindane and DDT, but also lots of other things they couldn't identify. It was also the research labs, and would have had developmental insecticides which never made it into recognised products. St.Albans council who did the analysis tried to find former workers who could recall which bits of the site were used for what, but they couldn't find any who were still alive.
I don't think it was the Lea so much as a deep aquifer under the site which concerned them, which was used for drinking water some distance away. They were finding the chemicals were leaching through into that. The reed bed works by drawing water up from the aquifer which is contaminated, feeding it to the reeds which clean it, and letting it percolate back down again. This gradually cleans the mass of ground on top of the aquifer, over something like 25 years. Halfway through building the reed bed, the law changed making it illegal to discharge such waste into an aquifer. This nearly scuppered it--even though the discharge was cleaner than the aquifer itself, it still counted as a polluted discharge. I guess they managed to work around that as they did get it up and running.
unless the polluter no longer exists. Although there was still a Murphys Chemicals office on the corner of the site, Sainsbury's couldn't find any legal connection to the Murphys Chemicals which owned the site before, and so Sainsbury's became legally responsible.
In Scotland the contaminator pays if he`s traceable.If not the current owner is liable.The danger is that the contamination is not just the bit of coal you are seeing but that it is deep into the ground.If it is deep and depending upon what it is the council/epa may serve an order on you to clean it up.This as you are no doubt aware can be big bucks entailing complete excavation of the site,treatment of the contaminated spoil and it`s disposal.You then still have to reinstate the site. It is normal up here for the buyers legal people to have a clause in the sale that leaves any contamination problem with the seller and it is also usual for the sellers legal people to refuse to accept that condition.It is also acceptable to have a drilling for contamination survey to be done as part of the offer for the property.My preferred course of action when faced with the possibility that a possible purchase is contaminated is to walk away as the councils and enviromental agencies do not take into consideration what the cost will be to the landowner,all they want is the site cleaned up regardless off cost.There will always be another buy another day. Mark.
I meant to add that obviously if the survey shows it is only surface contamination due to the coal then it is no major problem.Agree a course of action with the contractor and put it to the council for approval. Bag all the coal and stack it on pallets ready for Palletline collecting it for me.:-)
It is sound counsel from Mark. I'm pleased to see that you are intending to purchase rather than have! What were the former uses before being a coal yard? If it was a gasworks (though only part if the area concerned is an acre) or similar then there could be a huge liability that you are buying into. At worst you could end up with the land in question being registered as "contaminated" on a Part IIA register and blighted as a liability rather than an asset - I speak as one who deals with such issues daily as a living.
From what you write about the PP, there must be a reason whether sound or not. The least you should do is have a Desk Top Study done by an environmental consultant to determine former uses of the site and adjacent areas to determine whether there is an issue and whether you can technically dispute the requirements for an intrusive survey.
A DTS would indicate whether such work is required and the extent of the work. To purchase without that knowledge would seem to be a significant risk to me!
Interesting one; you mentioned in your o.p. that you wished to do a barn conversion - of what? Do you intend to use existing footings? Are these adequate for the job all will more groundwork be involved?
I am surprised that the planners did the search for you (or at least shared the work that they had done to this extent) which is quite helpful in that they seem to accept that the only potentially contaminative use was as a coal yard. I'm having difficulty appreciatng what they are concerned about. They didn't mutter "black damp" did they? This is hardly relevant but they might just think so!
If we are only considering coal fines, etc. from the site's former use then it is likely that there is only a thin surface skin. If your barn conversion is to go beyond the existing footings of a building, then you will in any case want to remove the topsoil which would seem to be the likely "contaminated" depth, solving the contamination issue.
You can use this material for landscaping onsite.If they raise the question about what you intend to do with it, emphasise that you need the material as topsoil (don't use the unmagic words waste or spoil). Depending upon volumes and cost/ cost of delaying construction, be prepared to offer to remove to landfill.
The Environment Agency is a Statutory Consultee to your application and they might have responded to ensure that there is no chance of surface water running into the watercourse with coal fines in it - which justified since fines can ruin the ecology of the watercourse. Ensure that you can address those concerns.
I think that you will need to prove that the "contamination" is skin deep only. If they are sympathetic then they might accept photos of trial pits you have dug around the site, though I wouldn't hold my breath.
I suspect that the quickest will be to get a local environmental consultant in to do this work and confirm in a report which they are far more likely to accept!
If you are just using an existing footing, they might still be twitchy (unjustifiably I suspect) about gases creeping into the building via services and might be comforted by you explaining that you will ensure gas-tight entry of the services.
I hope this helps. I have had limited to go on and have therefore made some guesses!
Clot, thaks for that response. It looks increasingly that we will be walking away from this one as the vendor has his head in the sand and is not accepting this as an issue, and we are not prepared to pick up the potentially huge remediation costs. The existing barn footings would have been used, with a new internal slab and steel framework actually taking the main structural forces bearing on the slab. As the owner has already admitted that the run off coal fines have entered the (large) pond and hence onwards to the local water courses for several years, I suspect that that is where significant problems would arise. But if the owner isn't prepared to foot the majority of the clean up bill then he is going to remain the owner
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