Mistruths and omissions

It is interesting, if not alarming, to see the amount of misinformation
and omission of information used by campaigners against the landfill
disposal of low level radioactive waste in Augean's toxic waste disposal
facility near King's Cliffe.

Apparently you have to distort virtually everything (or keep it hushed
up) in order to appear to be the little people fighting against the big
bad corporate evil, or something.

Even our County Councillor, Heather Smith, falls into the trap. The
proponents of a Parish Poll in Nassington called a parish meeting at 7pm
in their Village Hall on a day where the hall was booked for a Parish
Council meeting at 7.15pm. The resulting rush was described by an
observer as "a shambles of a meeting" and yet the good Mrs Smith told
another public meeting yesterday that "Nassington Parish Council cut
short the meeting on the parish poll" (or words to that effect). Err, no
they didn't. Some idiot booked the meeting with only 15 minutes of time
free in the hall, perhaps in an attempt to overrun into the PC meeting
but nevertheless it was a failure of the arrangements of the first
meeting that "cut it short".

Something else I was told at our second parish meeting on the subject by
one of the 6 signatories calling the meeting - "Augean are a French
company". Err, no they aren't. Augean plc are a company registered in
England & Wales, Company No. 05199719, with Registered Office in
Yorkshire. They are a PLC traded on the Alternative Investment Market of
the London Stock Exchange. Their board, who you can see at
http://www.augeanplc.com/directors/default.aspx, look to have decidedly
English names. But there you go, let's not let a simple fact get in the
way of a good story.

A local campaigner against the LLW proposals has said that no "nuclear
waste" (his words) currently goes into landfill, no private company is
licensed to handle LLW, and Augean are the only company proposing to do
so. Err, wrong on several counts. The Environment Agency web site
describes two other applications to landfill LLW at
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/sectors/100241.aspx and
also explains how a site in Lancashire has been lanfilling LLW for some
years - "The application relates to their existing landfill site at
Clifton Marsh near Preston in Lancashire, PR4 0XE. The site already
holds a permit, under the Environmental Permitting Regulations, to
dispose of controlled waste. Separate authorisations under the
Radioactive Substances Act have allowed disposal of low level
radioactive waste at the site for over twenty years. Those
authorisations are held by sites who consign waste to Clifton Marsh, but
our regulatory policy is now that Sita should be authorised in their own
right, hence the current application."

So when we read of local opposition to putting slightly radioactive
waste into a landfill, instead of highly toxic substances, just remember
the climate of misinformation that fosters or produces this local
opposition.