A Shropshire vicar played a key role in a new two-part BBC documentary featuring Welsh Hollywood actor Michael Sheen’s investigation into toxic waste dumps.
The Rev Paul Cawthorne, priest in charge of churches in the Hadnall area, is also a long time environmental campaigner.
He began looking into the history of the former landfill site at Stoney Hill, in Telford, where former chemical giant, Monsanto, is known to have legally dumped waste in the mid to late 1980s.
“When I found out about the Monsanto chemical dumping at Stoney Hill, I next identified Sutton Walls in Herefordshire, then Cefn Mawr in north Wales,” he said.
“I then went around south Wales valleys identifying historically documented sites which needed additional testing,” he added.
Cawthorne said he has been on a 20 year mission to uncover the truth.
He said that “dangerously elevated levels” of polychlorinated biphenyls – toxic man-made chemicals which don’t easily break down in nature – were found in nine out of 10 sites discussed in the Buried BBC radio series.
“The results at some were literally off the scale and will have a big impact in professional circles, assuming they cannot continue to try to ignore them now,” he said.
Details of Monsanto’s involvement at Stoney Hill between 1985-1988, when it was managed by Shropshire County Council, was revealed in a recent Freedom of Information request.
Cawthorne has now called on the current site owners, Telford and Wrekin Council, to order a full fresh statutory investigation into the former landfill site near Coalbrookdale.
The LDRS asked Telford and Wrekin Council for a response to Cawthorne’s repeated calls for an investigation.
A council spokesperson said: “Information about Stoneyhill landfill site’s active management plan is available on the council’s website.”
The council took over the management of the former landfill site in 1998 and states on its website there is “no evidence in the records received from Shropshire County Council that toxic materials or waste were tipped in Stoneyhill landfill.”
It also carries out regular testing and it states these have not identified any cause for concern.
The council’s website adds that a detailed assessment and review was carried out by the Environment Agency in 2008 and “as a result the site is not considered a harm to the local environment.”
For the documentary, he put his focus on the former activities of Monsanto, which produced a range of chemicals at factories in Newport, south Wales, and Ruabon, near Chirk, before the disposal legislation began to tighten in 1974.
Buried with Michael Sheen, comes to BBC Two, BBC One Wales and BBC iPlayer from Monday 17 August.
This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.
