At @fightingdirty.bsky.social, we sued over this issue, and lost on the grounds that the Environment Agency couldn't be in breach because the government had issued no direction. An absurdity, which means that poisons continue to be spread on farmland every day. 🧵 theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com
A big question is what is the National Farmers Union doing? Why doesn't it warn its members that the water companies are dumping toxins on their land, potentially making it unfarmable, to cut costs? And that the government is failing to regulate the practice? We've tried writing, to no avail. The potential consequences are unthinkable. We could be looking at very large areas of farmland being condemned as too toxic for food growing. Or, even worse, given the absence of monitoring, not being condemned, and food continuing to be produced there. Many of these chemicals are cumulative. Some of the contaminants in sewage sludge have a vast range of health and ecological impacts. We don't even know what is being spread and at what concentrations. But what we are beginning to realise is that almost all liquid wastes in this country go down the drain and onto the fields. Another gift to humanity from the water companies. Liquid waste disposers pay the water cos to dump their loads into sewage works, with scarcely any testing or monitoring. Result: a horrendous cocktail of poisons caught in the sludge. What to do with it? Give or sell it to farmers as fertiliser. At the same time, as our case revealed, the water companies have lobbied vigorously to prevent the sludge testing rules from being updated. So sewage sludge is simply not tested for the great majority of toxic contaminants, from PFASs to dioxins, furans, PAHs, microplastics etc. We are deliberately being kept in the dark, without proper testing at any point in the chain. God knows what we are consuming already. God knows what we *will* be consuming as these chemicals accumulate in the fields. This issue is screaming out for government action. Where is it? The thread on one page: skywriter.blue
skywriter.blue