I live in a small village called Wolsingham in County Durham and I'm lucky to have the River Wear wending its way through the place less than 100 yards from my house, but we have a problem, the steel works that was, has been demolished and its planned to put houses on the land but not before a coal depot is to be established on some of the land near the river and onto the railway line that follows it, apart from the dozens of coal carrying trucks thundering through the village every day with the danger to kids and elderly there will be pollution, the properties will devalue, the list goes on. I'm wondering if anyone can point us in the right direction to give us advice as to what we can do, we've already had a few meetings but we need to get advice about damage to the local envioronment, i.e. fields and the river, it wont be if, it'll be when the run off from the coal depot hits the river, what damage is it going to do? The river is ravaged by poachers every year, the redds have been scoured by canoeists and this coal depot is going to hit it even more.
We need helpful advice and quick, please.

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If it wasn't for pickpockets I wouldn't have a sex life.

Hi you do know that they are also going to start building on the old cement works at Eastgate that's where my caravan is ;some of my family members used to own Friarside farm at the top of Wolsingham

Hi Kernel

A couple of questions - first is this depot covered or uncovered? Secondly, have you seen the details contained in the planning application submission?

If it is uncovered, then there should be provision for any run-off to be collected and sent to the foul sewer network (assuming there is one present). Otherwise they should have some other means of preventing coal dust running off the storage area and into the surface water drainage system , which would probably have to be a treatment system of their own. Try calling the local EA office and ask to speak to someone in the Environment Management team for the Wear and explain your concerns. Ask whether they have seen the details for the planning application and what their opinions/comments were if they have. If they have not seen the application, then advise them of what is proposed and give them as much detail as you can.
Additionally it may be worth checking whether there are other secondary pollution threats ie a fuel storage area for vehicles/plant used on site. There are regs for how/where this is stored. Also car/vehicle parking areas over a certain size should have properly sized oil separators for the drainage from these areas.
Also, if the development is going ahead, there could be risks of pollution incidents during the construction phase - keep an eye on the surface water outfall that serves the site and report (0800 807060) any 1 - suspended solids/silt discharging from the site and 2. oil pollutions most usually from diesel/gas oil/hydraulic oil from plant vehicles/generators/oil storage (tank overfills/spillages etc) present on site.

Let me know if you get any other details.

Ian