Planning to fail: Thor and Infratil

EA and TDC aviation fuel into Pegwell Bay.

Sewage from Tivoli Brook into Margate seafront.

Low-level flights over the towns.

A cargo airport by stealth built on the drinking water supply.

Planning permission for a passenger terminal but cargo sheds built.
ChinaGate warehouses built on the drinking water supply.

A Thor mercury factory with water pollution spreading beyond the factory and rolling downhill into Margate.

The EA attempting to refuse to provide under EIR: toxin reports, internal memos, emails, sampling reports etc.

Thor mercury were banned in Africa.

The worst drinking water in Kent.

The highest lung cancer rate in Kent.

Thor mercury and Infratil’s 747 Jumbo Jets don’t discharge candy floss into the water supply do they?

Here’s extracts from 2 reports on Thor:


Prior to Thor Chemicals� move to South Africa in 1988, a mercury plant was operated, beginning in the mid 70s, at Margate, Kent, England.� During the 1980s, concerns were first raised by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) �when allegations of excessive levels of mercury in the air and in workers� urine were investigated� (Mills 10).� Threatened by prosecution by the HSE for over-exposure of workers to mercury, Thor closed its plant in 1987, relocating to South Africa, where untrained and unskilled Zulu-speaking labour was employed.� Within a year the local water board there [in Natal] found high levels of mercury pollution in a nearby river� (Pallister 8).

The workers of Thor Chemicals, Inc., were uninformed of the potential dangers of and precautions to take against mercury poisoning.� Instead, employees were either moved to another part of the factory or terminated:� �[w]hen workers recorded high mercury contamination levels they were advised to drink orange juice� (McGreal 14) in order to expedite the excretion of excess mercury.� One worker, Siphiwe Sibiya, ignored the incinerator clouds that spread around him:� ��if you touched your lips with your tongue or washed your face there was a bitter taste.� My nails went black.� Sometimes I would take off my mask to find blood in it.� Then my nose was bleeding, my hands shaking��

Thor didn’t close in 1987.

It closed in 2008. After the chemical fire at Xmas 2007.

What is stored there?
How is the cleanup going?
Why are Thor mercury handling the cleanup?
Why didn’t it close?
Who issued permits to continue?

All remain unanswered from the Environment Agency.

From the EA presentation on “how not to poison your own water supply” last month what action have TDC taken?

Have any councikllors riasefdd this?

Have any councillors and civil servants discussed this at TDC?

Are there copies of the minutes?

Here’s the news report on the Corby case this week of “death by council” with unregulated disposal and cleanup of toxic materials causing genetic birth defects.

TDC still have no contaminated land register.

Ask Paul: paul.leinster@environment-agency.gov.uk
Ask Andrew: Andrew.ogden@environment-agency.gov.uk
Ask Brian: brian.white@thanet.gov.uk

Do they need to appear before the public each month at Ramsgate Town Council?

Does water need to be provided for them for the Taste Test?

Steve Ladyman and Roger Gale MP tell us - from an EA briefing - that it’s the public’s fault for pouring paint down the sink and absolutely nothing to do with a mercury factory or cargo airport at all.

Definitely not.

Shush.

Don’t tell the public.

Failed. Failed. Failed.

Time for Change.