I HAVE been travelling across the Lower Don Valley for many years both to work and with my involvement with the Five Weirs Walk and before that with ecological surveys with Sheffield Wildlife Trust.
I have, over the last few years, been struck by the fact that so many scrapyards and firms recycling building rubble and metals have proliferated and have no apparent environmental controls.
There are, effectively, mountains of scree and sludge made up of crushed rubble to the north of Carlisle Street and on Stevenson Road metal scrapyards, an admirable reuse of materials that would otherwise go to landfill or be wasted. All these drain into the Don, now a river supporing trout and salmon!
In Celtic times Dana, the river meant 'The Shining One'.
What I notice, however, is that in winter rain brings down the slurry on to the road in huge quantities from these 'urban quarries', this blocks drains and gullies which then overflow roads like Newhall Road and must contribute to flooding in the valley bottom and it certainly covers vehicles with sloppy muck.
In summer this mud dries and at the moment it is like a beach!
It is like driving through a sand storm when the wind blows and it also causes wheels to spin on the gravel and skid, making driving hazardous.
Firms make good money from charging for skips, scrapping old metal, selling on the hard core and saving on landfill charges.
We, the public and the business community, however, and the environment, pay for their negligence. Witness the millions spent on flood damage and jobs lost.
All that is needed is good silt traps with 'cattle grids' over them and regular clearance by a sludge gulper, and monitoring.
If it were in Fulwood or Dore or a a pig farm and its slurry it would be soon cured!
It was the same under Labour control with its high profile MPs and Councillors for the area but come on the new Lib Dem council and the Environment Agency. It's not rocket science, get a grip!
Mike Wild, (Veteran Stroppy Environmentalist who was told in the 70s that the Don could never be clean again as we were an industrial city and that was the price of progress and where there was muck there was brass!) S2
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