As reported recently in the BEN, a survey carried out last year found that Bolton soils are contaminated with deadly dioxins at seven times the average level for the UK.

Bolton Environmental Health Services agree with the Environment Agency, that this contamination is of no concern to Bolton people, but they accept that in Germany such concentrations would be of great concern to German people, in fact the German government would ban the growing of food crops on soils contaminated to the Bolton level.

This is yet another episode in the saga that treats local people as political footballs in a game whose main aim is to maximise profits for incinerator operators and their backers, at the expense of income tax and council tax payers.

If the Bolton Incinerator project finally goes ahead, its emissions will add to the already unacceptable levels of dioxins in Bolton soils. The tall, smoking chimney at Raikes Lane will once again become a familiar Bolton landmark, proclaiming to visitors that here is a town whose waste and pollution managers have failed - for the want of trying.

Dennis Watson

(For Bolton Friends of the Earth)

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.