It is clear that the MOD is doing all it can to deny all liability for sites that it has sold off or returned to owners prior to the beginning of the Land Quality Assessment (LQA) programme that began in the late 1980s.
The prime example among hundreds of sites is Dalgety Bay where extensive radioactive contamination has been found on the beach and foreshore. This was due in all probability to work involving radium used to illuminate dials etc on aircraft.
Another site which has many of the same indicators for radium contamination as Dalgety Bay is Wig Bay in south west Scotland. At RAF Pulham the presence radium contamination has been confirmed by the local council.
In 2000 the Governments independent advisory committee on the management of radioactive waste gave advice to MOD ministers on contaminated land which included the need to preserve historic information and enabling access to that information.
"Discussion and findings
6.1 It is clear that many MoD sites will have been contaminated with radioactivity as a result of past defence activities. RWMAC therefore welcomes the LQA programme that has been set up by MoD to identify contamination, including that arising from radioactivity, within the current defence estate.
6.2 However, the search for radioactively contaminated sites as part of this programme has been substantially hampered by the lack of historical records. While the close-knit military community seems to exhibit a good "folk-memory" of likely sources of contamination, it is unlikely that this can compensate for the lack of written records. Even on the sites where radioactive contamination is known to have occurred, there is a need to identify precisely where it is located across what is usually an extensive area.
6.3 The current LQA programme focuses on the current defence estate, notably the sites which MoD wishes to divest. However, there have been disposals of substantial numbers of sites in the past of which MoD has stated it has no comprehensive record. In RWMAC's view, it is nearly inevitable that some of this former MoD land will have been contaminated by luminising activities and/or luminised materials. None of the key individuals spoken to during the course of RWMAC's work questioned this view.
6.4 The most likely form of contamination that might have existed on such sites is buried radium-226 either as materials used to produce luminising paint or the paint itself, or products that have been painted. The latter could have been burned before burial. MoD has stated to RWMAC that these disposal practices are unlikely to have caused a wider problem because radium is insoluble and therefore essentially immobile. However, when questioned by RWMAC, the Ministry had relatively little evidence (other than a few early laboratory solubility tests) to substantiate this view. RWMAC believes that significantly more work is needed before MoD's assertion that buried radium is immobile in all soil and groundwater conditions can be reliably proven.
6.5 RWMAC was not made aware of any MoD exercise to identify land disposed of before the LQA system was introduced. Because of the possibility of contamination on at least some of these sites, RWMAC believes that MoD should consider the feasibility of compiling a list of historical disposals, with consideration being given to earmarking those with the highest probability of radioactive contamination."
In the context of alienated, sites It clear that the advice on the preservation of records and the need to retain knowledge of subject matter experts and those with personal experience at sites has been ignored. In fact it appears there has been postive action taken to place key information in the national archive. This effectively removes the information from the FOI regime since MOD can say they no longer hold the information. Regarding information the MOD may still hold either in office or archived file lists are needed to access this information but it is clear from the MOD response to a FOI
However, we have to advise you that we will not be able to answer your request without exceeding the appropriate limit. This is because to the only official record of registered files is the MOD Form 262 of which there is one form for each file and part of a file opened. There are many thousands of MOD Form 262s which make up the official file record for D Def H&S and D SEF Pol and to locate, retrieve, and extract information in scope of your request would involve some 7 man days of effort"
The answer implies that there are significant difficulties in locating files in order to inform policy and questions about issues, some only a few years old. D Sef pol, D Def H&S and DS&C were in turn all Directorates of MOD Head Office concerned with health, safety and the environment. The difficulty in accessing files means that it is very difficult to look back and learn from previous accidents and polluting events. So, such unfortunate incidents are likely to reoccur
MOD as modern forward looking organisation has moved away from paper based document system to an electronic documents records management system (EDRM)
This report explains the advantages of the EDRM system
"Easy location and retrieval of information The ability to find information from document libraries, as well as many other portals and intranets, has fundamentally changed the way the MoD works
Questions answered The infrastructure facilitated the development of a 'Freedom of Information' toolkit, which enables the MoD to fulfill its commitments to Central Government and the public in this area.
The new system enables the MOD to meet UK Government requirements for compliance and records management."
From difficulties the MOD has in providing answers to FOIs it appears the EDRM does not include references to old paper files held in archive and is essentially based around information to hand at the date the EDRM was implemented.
So far as historic information is concerned it appears that the MOD suffered a "corporate lobotomy" .
It is also now clear that the expensive subject matter experts who held significant parts of the corporate memory in their heads have now left the MOD through retirement or staff cuts.
The report Information Management Assessment Ministry of Defence March 2009 stated that
"Information is recognised as the key asset for running the business of The Ministry
of Defence and is used to support effective data and information sharing and knowledge creation".
The examples high-lighted above and else where in this blog suggest there are significant failures in meeting recommendations in the report Information Management Assessment Ministry of Defence March 2009
The potential liability
This report provides an excellent overview of the scale of the problem for both the existing and alienated estate :-
Land Contamination: Technical Guidance on Special Sites: MoD Land
R&D Technical Report P5-042/TR/01 Dr G Bulloch, J E Steeds, K Green, M G Sainsbury, J S Brockwell, N J Slade Research Contractor: WS Atkins Consultants Limited In association with: BAE SYSTEMS Environmental Services.
Conclusion
- The MOD liabilities for the alienated estate may run to hundreds of millions pounds of taxpayers money.
- MOD has failed to preserve records that would help identify these liabilities.
- There may have been and may continue to be a conscious policy within the MOD of doing everything possible to reject claims relating to the alienated estate and positively obstruct such claims by neglecting to preserve evidence of polluting processes etc; despite advice to preserve such information.
- The MOD policy is to challenge independent assessments of the risks from pollutants and/or MODs' liability, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
- Communities and the environment continue to suffer blight because of the MODs', failure to take responsibility for the legacy of past activities and the consequent pollution the MOD caused.
- MOD is behaving like an ostrich and just hoping the issue will go away
The MOD needs to accept liability for the contamination at Dalgety Bay so that the contamination can properly identified, managed and dealt with; claims by those who suffered blight etc can be addressed. The MOD needs to implement the principles of environmental justice in its policies and decision making.
MODs reluctance to accept liability may be influenced by the precedent that might be set for the hundreds of other contaminated sites the MOD sold off since WW2, such as RAF Pulham in Norfolk
Dunfermline Press reports :-
GORDON BROWN has asked the head of the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) to make an early decision on who is responsible for the radiation leaks at Dalgety Bay. He said this was now essential if the remedial action plan to clean up the Bay area was to go ahead and be funded. It was time, he said, to name who was guilty for the leaks so further delays in cleaning up could be avoided.
He has written to SEPA after a letter to Dalgety Bay Community Council from the Ministry of Defence. In it the Ministry says it cannot agree to fund the clean-up until SEPA makes a decision as to who is responsible for the damage at the Bay's foreshore.
In his letter Mr Brown says the delays have to be brought to an end and he wants clean-up work to begin next May. Mr Brown, who has already met the Defence Secretary and held a Parliamentary debate on the issues, told SEPA, "It is clear that we will not make progress on the remediation plan until a decision is made about responsibility for the contamination and in that context I am writing to ask when you will make a determination on this issue.
"As we understand it there has yet to be conclusive evidence suggesting that other parties than the Ministry of Defence may be responsible for the dumping of radiation materials. "The MOD say they will only fund the clean-up if they are held to be liable by you and I hope you can
tell me when we can come to a conclusion on this matter.
"The people of Dalgety Bay have been very patient. We cannot continue with the prevarication and passing of the buck on who is responsible.
"A decision should be made as quickly as possible to protect the May 2013 timetable for the start of the clean-up."
My personal view has always been; that the evidence proves that the MOD was the probable source of the radium contamination and that by denying liability MOD has and continues to waste large amounts taxpayers payers money over the period of 20 or more years since the contamination was discovered.
It is also very convenient that the papers relating to the sale of Dalgety Bay which may have provided key evidence about liability cannot be found.
"Dalgety Bay the MOD is unable to locate records about the sale of radioactively contaminated land and the local Community Council appeals to the public for their help."
Its notable that the MOD is looking find a sites to break apart the decommissioned nuclear
submarines including Roysth a few miles west of Dalgety Bay
NIS report
"MoD has published a Request for Information in the Defence Contracts Bulletin and the Official Journal of the European Union seeking responses from private owners of nuclear licensed sites in the UK that may, subject to a comprehensive and publicly transparent site selection process, be able to meet its intermediate level waste storage requirements.
Babcock Marine, owners of the Rosyth and Devonport dockyards which are being considered as candidate sites for dismantling of the redundant submarines"
In view of the way in which the MOD has handled the contamination of the beach and foreshore at Dalgety Bay, it will be interesting to see to what extent there is public and political support in
Scotland for the dismantling work to take place at Rosyth.
From an ethical point of view the choice of Rosyth could be seen the MOD taking advantage of an economically disadvantaged community by holding out the chance of some short term work in exchange for taking on the legacy of the nuclear submarine programme. Dalgety Bay provides an example of the consequences of a legacy left by past defence activities.
In January I said in this blog that RAF/RNAS Pulham provides a typical example of a site potentially contaminated with Radium.
It is now clear from a press report that Radium contamination from past defence activities is present on the site.
It was inquiries made by Milcon Research and Consulting made to the Local Council that in part prompted the Council to look into the issue of Radium contamination at RAF/RNAS Pulham.
It was also clear the response MOD made to an FOI request that the MOD held no information that would help identify if Radium was present on the site.
It is also clear that there are many more sites such as Pulham where radioactive contaminates and other contaminates are present and may pose a risk to human health and the environment. But that the MOD has long since lost records that would identify such sites.
RNAS/RAF Pulham provides a typical example of a site potentially contaminated with Radium
The Government recently introduced a new regime for the management of contaminated land to protect both man and the environment. Recent FOIs have been asked, to try to establish the extent of the hazards and risk arsing from historic contamination due to use of radium as a luminising agent by the Ministry of Defence. This issue was also subject to a detailed review by the Governments Radioactive Waste management Advisory committee (RWMAC).
The recent concerns about this legacy of radium contamination and the potential risk to the public and environment has been highlighted by the discovery that the beach at Dalgety Bay is far more extensively contaminated than previously thought and the MODs extreme reluctance to admit liability. The MOD has also released a list of some of the sites where radium contamination is an issue.
What has become clear that MOD has little if any records about radium contamination for those parts of the defence estate disposed of between the end of the Second World War and the 1980s. What records that do exist are mainly clearance certificates which were concerned about unexploded ordnance and explosives and not with other contaminates such as Radium, heavy metals, asbestos, chemical weaopns or organic solvents.
In response to an FOI it is clear With introduction of the contaminated land regime that the MOD policy is :-
“The site was despised of in the early 1960s and predates the MOD Land Quality Assessment programme. The MOD there only holds the enclosed 1969 Clearance Certificate that might be relevant to your request.
I am advised that former sites such as this fall within the statutory responsibility of the Local authority to inspect the land in its area and identify any contaminated land. It is therefore suggested that any evidence of contamination you have should be brought to the attention of the Local Authority “
This effectively shuffles off any responsibility to identify contaminated land that the MOD once owned or controlled to the Local Authorities. Local Authorities are very unlikely to hold any information about these sites and therefore are unlikely to have the means to identify whether or not such land is contaminated.
It is clear that with the need to find cost savings MOD has lost the capability to assist local authorities in identifying contaminated defence land. MOD may have transferred information that would have helped to the National Archive or the information may have been lost or destroyed.
I asked the Local Authority “Could you please provide me with information about the nature and extent of radium contamination at RNAS/RAF Pulham in Norfolk Lat 52° 24.690'N long 1° 14.011'E”
“The historic past use by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) of part of the site many years ago for aircraft breaking raises the possibility of radium 226 contamination. The nature and extent of any possible contamination is being considered but formal investigations which require detailed planning have yet to be instigated. The Council is actively working with the Environment Agency, Health Protection Agency, MOD and others within the legal framework from government to clarify what action is appropriate to investigate the possibility of contamination.”
The Wikipedia entry for RNAS/RAF Pulham says “During World War II, Pulham Air Station was used as an aircraft salvage yard for the East of England, with several huge dumps of scrapped aircraft. The resultant contamination of the land is visible even today. The RAF used Pulham for storage and Maintenance Unit work until closure in 1958.” This activity appears to very similar to that at RNAS Donnibristle which may have lead to the contamination of Dalgety Bay with Radium.
Conclusion
The lack of information to identify whether or radium contamination is present means that only a very expensive physical survey will provide an answer.
The lesson to be learnt is that it is important to retain knowledge and information over long periods of time if you wish to answer questions of liability and risk.
