From my original Facebook note.

1.Look how great we are!

Berkeley will tell you about all the good work they do in the Southall community:

·Giving a tiny fraction of their £600m profits to the local homeless shelter

·Creating the ‘edible’ garden (and ad hoc public toilet) outside the college on Beaconsfield Road

·Partnering with the Let’s Go Southall project to get Southallians fit, healthy and active!

·Making the (acid) Rain Garden at Blair Peach Primary School for children to play in…

·Promising that the Southall Waterside development will make your life better by building leisure ‘facilities’, ‘publicly accessible’ poisoned parks, and a community ‘facility’.

·Staff volunteering to be school governors…

Don’t fall for it.

2.You are being aggressive or over-emotional!

If you do complain, and especially if you are angry and/or upset about being poisoned by Berkeley Group, they will accuse you of being aggressive and/or letting your emotions get in the way of their ‘facts’. They may even threaten to have you escorted out of the room if you are in a face to face encounter with them. Tony Pidgley accused me of continually ‘having a pop’ at him when we met.

We have every right to be angry and upset.

Berkeley Group are the emotionless, aggressive, ‘neighbours from hell’, who have created - quite literally - a hostile environment for the people of Southall:

· They have assaulted us mentally and physically

· They have attacked us with poisonous gas and dust

· They have harmed our health and damaged our property

· We have repeatedly asked them to stop, but they carry on regardless and without any consideration for our health or property

· If we did what they do to us, we would be arrested and put in prison

· They are like ‘serial poopers’, but very much worse

· At the Air Quality Scrutiny Panel meeting in September, Damian Leydon could not say what amount of upset neighbours or odour nuisance would make him think, ‘No, that’s too much. I must stop oppressing these people!’

3. The odorous work will be over soon

Sorry, but we don’t believe you. We’ve heard it all before…

It should clear in days…

Q. How long is the decontamination work going to last for?

The programme of remediation (decontamination) is expected to last 2 years, but it is important to take note of two points from above. Firstly, the expected contamination likely to result in odour release is located in areas associated with the cola carbonisation process and secondly these areas are likely to have been dealt with by the end of 2017.

Likely to have been dealt with by the end of 2017…

SOUTHALL WATERSIDE

REMEDIATION WORK-FAQ

Thank you for your patience during this time,we understand the inconvenience remediation work on-site is having on local residents.We are pleased to say we are now well over two thirds of the way through. The following update explains why we are doing the remediation work and what we are doing to reduce the impact on our local neighbours.

What is happening at the Southall Waterside site?

You may be aware the site has had an extensive industrial past (including most recently being a gas works), which has left behind some soil and groundwater contamination. Prior to development, a programme of remediation works is being undertaken across

July 2018

Well over two thirds of the way through…

(They started in May 2017. 14 months later they claimed to be over 2/3 done. That mean 6-7months left…)

The firm, she added, has reached out to residents and invited them to tour the site and that everything possible is being done to mitigate the smell.

She said that the work will be finished by September and will provide 480 homes - which are much needed in the current housing crisis - 40 acres of public open space and community facilities.

…the work will be finished by September

We have to date completed in excess of 70% of the ground remediation works on site. We are targeting completion of the main ground remediation works by September/early October 2018. There are three very small areas that will be left due to ongoing National Grid works and the removal of the Information centre (see fig 1 below) these are expected to be low impact and we plan to remove any impacted material to an external registered waste centre.

Via email in July 2018

Completion of the main ground remediation works by September/ early October 2018…

To reduce the potential impact of odour, we have cut back the operational output from the soil hospital and, as planned, we will be scaling this area back from mid-November. The barrier foam odour suppressant will continue to be deployed to all impacted material, in addition we have increased our specialist contractor attendances to allow the barrier foam application to be increased throughout the night.

14 September 2018 via email

‘Scaling back’ from mid-November 2018…

The remainder of the north of the site and east of the site will be excavated in 2018. It is noted that there is not expected to be any contamination in the east of the site, using as playing fields or in the north of the site which was only used for coal storage. These areas of the site are not expected to produce significantly contaminated material or any significant odours.

The remedial (decontamination) works should be completed by the end of 2018 / early 2019. As stated above the most contaminated areas of the site should have been dealt with by the end of 2017.

Ealing Council report 2017

Should be completed by the end of 2018 / early 2019…

unusually warm summer; however, we expect this to decrease as the weather becomes cooler and the ‘soil hospital’ activity to be completed in early 2019. We fully

Ealing Council statement October 2018

To be completed in ealy 2019…

Due to take place late 2019…

Not only do we not believe them, but we know from experience that even when the soil hospital is not in operation (from 6pm until 8am, and at weekends, and supposedly sealed with a foam barrier), we still get odour. So even when they do finish the soil remediation work, we can expect the odour to continue.

4. The odours are within acceptable limits

If we can smell it, the levels must be between 2.5 parts per million and 5 parts per million (ppm) in the air. Which is way above the workplace legal limit of 1 ppm.

When we met with Berkeley Group founder and chair, Tony ‘Poison’ Pidgley, and his Executive Board member lapdog Karl ‘Window Cleaner’ Whiteman, Karl informed us that benzene levels had averaged 3.25 ppm and never exceeded 5ppm!

They will state that they are monitored on-site by ‘independent’ agencies Ealing Environmental Health officers, the Environment Agency, Environ and Atkins, and all find that they are working within their legal permit.

I’ve no doubt that is true, although we’ve yet to see the data, despite their promises to give it to us.

Are the agencies monitoring the site really independent?

Ealing Council are Berkeley’s partners in all of this, and heavily invested in seeing this project through, whatever the cost, in order to achieve their goals for building new ‘affordable’homes for Berkeley to sell to investors living in China (also, who will buy the ‘unaffordable’homes?).

How else do you explain the total failure of democracy in Southall and Ealing, where almost all elected representatives have ignored and dismissed residents’ complaints,just like Berkeley,have for 16 months?

Environ and Atkins are getting paid to do their ‘independent’ monitoring.

While we hope the Environment Agency (EA) is a truly independent monitor,every time we complain to them about the air pollution in our homes, schools, etc., they make an appointment to visit the Southall Waterside site in a couple of weeks.

Amazingly,they then report back that everything is fine on-site and ‘within acceptable limits’.They even say that as Berkeley keep investing in more of the totally useless (and presumably cheap) ‘chocolate teapot’ odour suppressants they use, they have done ‘more than could be reasonably be expected of them’!

Environmental law heavily favours Berkeley, unfortunately, and it appears there is actually very little the EA can do to stop them. Or maybe they just can’t be bothered?

And even if it is all ‘within acceptable limits’, that suggests that there are still some toxins in the air and soil.

Indeed, the cleaned soil they are using to backfill the site with prior to building new homes on it, will first be covered with a ‘geotextile layer’, and then concrete, to keep the poison in.

Meanwhile, it’s just lying around in huge uncovered piles, the wind blowing the dust into our homes,gardens, streets, parks, schools, workplaces or places of worship….

And no one is monitoring this at all.

Strangely, the air quality monitors that were in place in Southall (including at Blair Peach Primary School) were removed in 2016,just before Berkeley Group started work…

5. The odour does not pose a risk to health

Ask them what is causing the smell of petrol?

The smell of petrol is caused by benzene. (They might say it’s due to other hydrocarbons. If they do ask them to specify which ones. They may say there is benzene in your home already - there is, but not so much that you can smell it!)

Benzene causes cancer. (As do many of the other hydrocarbons.)

The World Health Organisation says:

· there are no safe levels of benzene (or many of the other hydrocarbons)

· indoor air pollution (which is not being monitored by the authorities) is worse than outdoor air pollution (because there is no wind to disperse it)

· that children are especially vulnerable due to their small size, narrower airways, and being at key physical and cognitive developmental stages.

There may be other toxins in the air and dust pollution, too, for example asbestos,cyanide and arsenic.

Many residents have complained of a whole host of symptoms that could be related to exposure to low levels of benzene over sixteen months, including:

· Headaches

· Eye, nose and throat irritation

· Cough

· Hoarse voice

· Nausea, stomach pain and vomiting

· Reduced appetite, fatigue or tiredness

· Sensitisation

· Skin rashes

· Dizziness

· Breathing difficulties and asthma

· Fits or seizures

· Miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy

· Irritability, stress, depression and anxiety

The headteacher at Blair Peach Primary School reported an extremely strong smell coming from the gas works site last year, which caused headaches and asthma.

This was at the same meeting where she and the governors co-opted Richard Watler, Head of Construction at Southall Waterside, on to the board….

6. There’s benzene in your home already!

Yes, there is. It’s in furnishings, carpets, household cleaners, when you grill or burn food you produce benzene, it’s in cigarette smoke.

But it’s not in our homes to such a level that we can normally smell it like we can smell the petrol odour wafting in from Southall Waterside.

And, ordinarily, we’d be able to ventilate our homes, by OPENING OUR WINDOWS! Something we are unable to do while being attacked by poison gas.

I smell a rat!

Also reported by Mrs Puri, two dead rats were found in the nursery playground at Blair Peach. (Berkeley Group arranged for Rentokil to remove them, apparently!)

What killed the rats?

Why were Berkeley Group so keen to dispose of the bodies?

There is long and terrible history of governments and corporations lying to the public about the safety of their products and health and safety recommendations. Here are some well known examples:

· Tobacco

· Asbestos

· Dalkon Shield

· Thalidomide

· Corby Steel Works

· Enfield Island Village (MoD site)

· Grand Union Village (Taylor Woodrow site)

· Bhopal

· Grenfell

I won’t link to these, but encourage people to find out for themselves, and make up their own minds on whether or not to trust Berkeley Group when they tell us it’s safe.