EFFLUENT containing noxious substances will end up in the local water supply, a doctor warned Buckfastleigh's Whitecleave Quarry planning inquiry on Tuesday.

Dr Mike Rodger, who lives in the town, feared such a scenario would 'cause widespread problems' in Totnes and Torbay area.

He was giving evidence at MVV/Gilpin's appeal against Devon County Council's refusal to allow them to instal a waste processing, recycling and storage facility at the Strode Road site.

Dr Rodger, a specialist registrar in orthopaedic and trauma surgery at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, said the noxious chemical composition of incinerator bottom ash (IBA) brought to the site from Devonport had potential to contaminate the water table as well as extractions from local boreholes.

He claimed the appellants planned to discharge effluent into the Dean Burn, a water course feeding the Littlehempston drinking water extraction plant downstream.

'Therefore, this leachate will end up in the drinking water. It contains a variety of noxious substances, many of which accumulate in the food chain and in man,' he said.

And he predicted: 'This has potential to cause widespread problems across Totnes and Torbay.'

Dr Rodger reckoned the appellants had not addressed the water contamination issue. All that had been done was to use settlement tanks to allow solid particles to fall out of the effluent before discharge.

He told the inquiry: 'The proposal does not have a condition preventing IBA coming from other as yet unbuilt plants. It's possible the Buckfastleigh plant will continue to have negative impacts for decades beyond the working life of the Devonport incinerator.'

He had conducted a local health survey of 117 households in the immediate area of the site which involved 334 people.

Fifty-two felt their asthma would worsen while 46 felt other breathing difficulties they experienced would deteriorate.

Sixty-six people with 'non-specific' health issues estimated their conditions would worsen while 18 people with depression feared more problems.

Twenty of those questioned who suffered from anxiety reckoned their conditions would be exacerbated while 63 with stress-related issues expected a similar downward spiral.

Some 135 people in the survey thought road safety matters would worsen under the new enterprise, if permission was granted.

Dr Rodger said he became concerned about the proposals when he learned that 60,000 tonnes of incinerator bottom ash would be brought to the site every year.

'I suggest that the adverse impacts of the scheme significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits in terms of pollution of air and drinking water,' he maintained.

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