Leachate - Does it pose risk discharged near a public beach?

Trevor Cowin is still banging on about leachate disposal into what the government euphemistically call ‘a closed sewer’ system. Anyway good for Trevor! (Link):

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=42693&headline=Leachate%20inves...

What the government fail to mention is the ‘closed sewer’ system is open at one end where it pours into Peel bay. As a bonus for a long time the sewer was broken so it was seeping out just a few yards from the beach. Trevor says the government are breaking their own laws and the AG seemed to agree with him. However the Chief Secretary Will Greenhow says:

‘I am aware that this does not accord with the initial view taken by the Attorney General’.

Note that word ‘initial’. I don’t know about you but I get uneasy when a civil servant no matter what rank they hold are second guessing the senior law officer in the land who also happens to be a member of Tynwald. It's a bad day for democracy if ‘the tail starts wagging the dog’.

Leachate from the Raggatt ‘super tip’ (remember that) is obviously so toxic that it needs to be disposed off in a ‘closed sewer’ system. Is that correct I mean? I know its gone on for years but does that make it right? What is the danger posed and what's in the leachate does anyone check - the government lab perhaps - and if so do they randomly sample it and say. ‘Well it's a lot better today than this time last year’.

There are so many questions and it's clear that any answer Cowin eventually gets from government will be as opaque as the leachate pouring into a drain in Mill Road.

At times like these I wish I was still a campaigner and not ‘a retired old fart’ who has hung up his pen! If I was still a campaigner I would set my sights a bit higher than Trevors focus on DEFA and Howards Office. I mean lets be honest Howard may come across as a nice guy on ‘The Moulton Show’ but that's not reality TV.

No if I had the wherewithal I would raise the issue with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment. I would say:

“You really need to give that Isle of Man government a coat of looking at.

“They bang on about the biosphere status that your lot have given them while all the time they are pouring something nasty into the sea a few hundred yards from where children play on a beach.

“What are you going to do about that Mr Special Rapporteur?”

Bernard Moffatt