Awkward squads fighting toxic waste

Awkward squads

Unfunded, unsung and unloved they may be, but local groups fighting toxic waste have become strong national and international networks

Paul Evans, The Guardian

Wednesday June 8, 2005

More than 100 community-based groups campaigning against some of Europe's most powerful companies now span the UK. Their beef is with landfill sites, waste incinerators and cement kilns in their immediate locality. Some groups are made up of hundreds of people, others very few, but all depend on dedicated, passionate individuals prepared to sacrifice everything to protect their communities from toxic pollution.

Unfunded, largely unsung and deeply unloved by the companies they target, they form part of an international network of people who put themselves on the line.

David Levy is chairman of The Air That We Breathe, a group based in Westbury, Wiltshire. He has campaigned against a local cement kiln, and against all cement kilns burning hazardous waste, for the past decade. He is an expert in his subject, but campaigning has come at a cost.

"In 1995 I went to a public meeting when Blue Circle Cement [now Lafarge] applied to burn tyres as fuel instead of coal," says Levy. "I thought this was a sensible idea but had questions about whether the emissions were safe. The more I looked into it the more concerned I became about the impact of cement manufacture on the environment and health. I was asked to front the community group and take on the fight.

"That December I was sitting in a pew in our parish church, asking the old boy upstairs if I should take this on. There was a group of children putting out a nativity display and I felt I had a duty to fight for them. This was my answer and ever since, when it gets me down, I remember that."

Levy gave up his job as deputy headteacher to campaign full-time against the burning of hazardous wastes in cement kilns. He has taken his case to the high court and the court of appeal and lost; he has funded projects out of his own pocket. "I have lived on £5,000 a year for the last eight years," he says.

Lafarge Cement UK's managing director, Jean François Saughtin, says he respects groups like The Air That We Breathe. "We are committed to open communication and are actively engaged in dialogue with community groups across the country. Clearly these discussions can be around strongly held views; we respect this and welcome the rigour of debate."

Disillusioned with the British legal system, the Environment Agency and what he sees as the government's inability to control big business and protect the environment and public health, Levy is looking to Europe. In April, The Air That We Breathe, together with the French group Pour La Terre - which has pulled off a legal challenge against a Lafarge cement kiln - organised a conference in Nice, attracting dozens of similar groups from across Europe. Such groups are increasingly confident of successfully using EU anti-pollution legislation.

Pauline Smout, a member of the Hafod Environmental Group, based in Wrexham in north Wales, was also at the conference. Smout began campaigning in 1988 against a landfill site 100 yards from her house in Ruabon, Clwyd. "It was a terrible life. The smell was so bad, people were sick in the street. Once planning permission was granted there was no protection and the authorities hadn't got the guts to do anything. That site was capped four months ago and now another huge landfill site is planned a quarter of a mile away with housing on two sides."

Despite having to represent the group herself for financial reasons, Smout and the Hafod Environmental Group is taking the Welsh assembly to court this month over the second landfill site.

"Sheer bloody-mindedness keeps me going," she says, "but it's difficult to always be in the awkward squad." Such court cases are technically complex and characterise the Kafkaesque world of legal machinations, scientific jargon, contested analysis and expert opinion inhabited by toxics campaigners. Being committed is only the first step to effective campaigning.

Ralph Ryder was a labourer working next to a waste incineration plant in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, until, he believes, it made him physically sick. Now he scrutinises epidemiology studies, chemical reports and runs the network, Communities Against Toxics (Cats).

"I lost my job through ill health in 1990 because of the waste incinerator and couldn't understand why workers and residents were being ignored by the authorities," says Ryder.

"We found dozens of communities suffering from the effects of waste incineration and landfill. Since 1990 Cats has helped 37 communities and we have 300 member groups.

"Waste is the inefficient face of industry. We are seeing the influence of American industry weaken European legislation, and the World Trade Organisation working like an unelected industrial quango, making international law. People don't want to know until it impacts on them directly."

Closer to home, these toxics campaigners don't think much of the Environment Agency either, branding it "toothless" in its regulatory function and claiming it fails to give community groups the vital support they need. Michael Guthrie, head of customer and community relations for the agency, says: "We recognise that some community groups don't trust us and perhaps we don't make it clear enough what the constraints of the Environment Agency are.

"When we deal with permit applications [for waste incinerators and concrete kilns burning waste materials] we play it straight down the line and the operators know we will enforce the rules. If there is a breach we will fine or persuade them to spend money to put it right. But we need to increase communication with community groups to explain agency decisions. We believe we've got most of the technical information right, but our communication needs to be better."

Some community-based campaigners feel that large environmental organisations such as Friends of the Earth are not doing enough to help. "We have limited resources and have to choose priorities when we get requests. We have to put them where they are most effective," explains Claire Wilton, senior campaigner on waste and resources for Friends of the Earth.

But Wilton does not see the community groups as a Nimby ["Not in My Back Yard] faction: "As a social movement these groups are growing and there is an international nature to groups in the UK," she says.

"The Gaia umbrella [of community-based groups campaigning against waste incinerators, cement kilns and landfill] is linked to groups in India and Australia. In the last three to four years I've been impressed by the way many groups have moved quickly from Nimby, to looking at solutions and fighting on national and international levels for citizens' rights."

"I'm not a Nimby, I'm pragmatic," says Levy. "We work with groups of people who are leaders of county councils, chief superintendents of police, mothers of kids at school - these are dedicated people who see injustice. The English don't like to be lied to. There is a divide and rule policy and politicians are trying to make it [cement kilns burning hazardous waste] a parochial not a national issue."

Much greater national and international networking is now helping the cause of community groups.

"The conference in Nice focused my mind on the seriousness of our position and how little the elected government and the regulator protect us from a poisoned future," says Levy, "The real misconception is that we've cracked old age and will live longer. We are more exposed to novel toxins than people in their 70s, and my children and grandchildren are even more exposed. We have to wake up to the fact."