Contamination

Information

Contaminated land is an issue which has been somewhat overlooked, but in recent years, homeowners have become increasingly aware as more and more cases are discovered.

Falling victim to contaminated land can mean a loss of value to a property, a huge clean-up bill and more importantly, health risks to the residents.

Contamination comes in many forms, Homecheck.co.uk can identify areas of possible contamination that has occurred due to former land use, and industries which left a cocktail of chemicals behind that may not have been remediated before a home was built.

There are an estimated 4,000 licensed landfill sites in the UK, but homebuyers also need to be aware of the location former sites.

Just because a home is not directly on top of a landfill site, old factory, railway or tannery, does not mean it is safe from potential contamination. Contaminants can travel up to 250m from their source.

500,000 UK homes are near toxic waste and 400,000 UK homes are built on rubbish. A Homecheck Environmental Report for just £37.70 plus VAT can help to identify if your home or prosepective property is near one.

Case Studies

Seaton Carew, Teesside - A long battle ahead as 91 homes face possible blight from a dirty industrial past

Angry homeowners are demanding compensation after experts discovered a wide area of residential land has been poisoned with lead, arsenic and zinc. Ninety-one homes on an estate in Seaton Carew, Hartlepool, are affected and owners fear house prices will plummet. Council chiefs are now taking legal action against the former landowners and the company which built the properties in the 1970s, but warned that it could take several years for the problem to be resolved for those affected.

The land was used as a storage area for pit props treated with preservatives from the early 1900s until the 1960s, but experts believe the contamination could be caused by ash that was dumped there from coke works.

Warning for children
Council chiefs declared that there was no need for members of the public to worry as any contaminants would be buried underground, and not on the surface. However, residents were told not to let children play with soil in their gardens while further tests are carried out and the situation could be determined. The perimeter of the former Brownfield land, where pit props coated in a chemical preservative used to be stored, was investigated and more tests were subsequently required in residents' gardens.

A steering group, made up of engineers, the Primary Care Trust, the Health Protection Agency, and a resident's representative, was formed. A key concern related to the extent to which individual houses are affected by indoor dust from contaminants.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is expected to meet the £250,000 cost of the investigation, but the bills for legal action will have to be paid by taxpayers.

£4.5m clean-up costs
The costs for cleaning up the contamination across the affected area are estimated at £4.5million. The gardens will have to be excavated but work will not start until either the former landowners or the developers - or both - accept liability and pay for it.

Hartlepool Borough Council had resisted residents demands that the clean up be met by their funds, even though the town's mayor guaranteed that residents would not have to pay for it. The council is concerned that it would create a legal precedent if they undertook voluntary remediation before liability was apportioned. Without voluntary remediation, the council will be preparing a remediation notice, but this will remain a challenge where the origins of the contamination are still unknown.

Case histories from other authorities shows that it can be several years from the serving of the determination notice to a start of remediation on site - the intervening period being taken up largely by the legal process.

Bawtry, Doncaster - Part IIA case sees High Court ruling on who is liable for cleaning up contaminated land.

Background
Cancer-causing chemicals were discovered in the gardens of 48 properties in Ivatt Close, Stirling Avenue and Gresley Avenue, Bawtry, which were all built on the site of an old gas works in 1966. The works, which produced gas from coal, and operated during the first half of the 20th century, were run by old city gas companies that were wound up when the industry was nationalised.

Coal tar, usually disposed of underground within brick-walled tanks, was first discovered by Steve Curtis when he was levelling the garden of his home in Ivatt Close in October 2001. He and his wife, Lisa have two boys who have never known what it is to have a garden to play in. During the opening of the case in April 2006, the court heard that residents were at risk of 'significant harm' from contact with the soil or from growing vegetables.

Beloved gardens destroyed
Doncaster Council instructed the Environment Agency to investigate, revealing the extent of contamination which included the heavy metal nickel and said that there was no alternative to digging up the gardens as there was a possibility that groundwater might have been contaminated.

A couple in Gresley Avenue spoke of their distress at the destruction of the garden they had worked for years to create. They claim that the Agency had not kept its promise to restore the garden to its original condition. The soil delivered was full of clay, the garden consequently flooded, requiring the couple, both in their 60's, to dig channels to drain it away.

A spokesman from the Environment Agency said that they were aware of the situation and would monitor the gardens over the next 12 months. The clean up operation was initially funded by the EA, but it aimed to recover 'a reasonable proportion' of the costs. Phase 2 would be the responsibility of Doncaster Council.

Who pays?
The EA declared that it would not be appropriate to recover the costs from the current homeowners and the housing developers who had built on the site, and would have been responsible for some of the bill, had been dissolved. The agency took National Grid Gas (NGG) to the High Court in a bid to make them pay. NGG ' formerly British Gas and Transco, which is responsible for distribution of gas across the country ' allegedly inherited' liability for the £700,000 clean up operation. The EA declared them the "appropriate person" under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and should be liable for paying for the clean-up on the grounds that the contamination was caused by one or more of its statutory predecessors.

The court rejected NGG's application to set aside the Environment Agency's view that it was the 'appropriate person' under Part IIA and was therefore responsible for remediation of the site. NGG had argued that contaminants in the soil had been deposited by the previous owners, the local town gas or nationalised gas companies that operated the works, and the reason that it was determined as a special site under Part IIA was because it was turned into a housing development.

Mr Justice Forbes ruled that NGG was a Class A Person (i.e. prime responsible) and rejected arguments that it did not knowingly cause or permit the land to be contaminated, that no liability was transferred to it as the site was never declared a statutory nuisance and that the Gas Acts could not transfer responsibility under Part IIA.

While this is only the second major case under the Part IIA regime, it does have major implications. Even though the judgement went against NGG, it was clear from the Judge's summing up that the liability would have passed to the builder if they were still in business. The remediation of the site to protect residents is underway, but what are the implications for other utility sites and former landfills? There are an estimated 2,000 past gas works sites and over 500,000 households directly affected by landfills in the UK.