FEARS have been raised about the popularity of land around Winsford being used as a dumping ground for abattoir and other waste.

Industry in Vale Royal has a close proximity to agricultural land, making spreading of waste on open land an attractive alternative to other methods of waste disposal.

Now environmentalists have expressed fears over the control and regulation of waste spreading.

The current Waste Management Licensing Regulations, drawn up in 1994, exclude a number of industries from the need to hold a waste management licence, resulting in waste such as paper pulp, textile waste, septic tank sludge and blood and gut contents from abattoirs being dumped in rural areas.

As contractors are paying landowners for the convenience of spreading waste on their land, the practice is becoming more commonplace.

The Environment Agency now has to measure the agricultural benefits of land-spreading against the immediate risks.

These include the danger of run-off incidents where waterways, adjacent land and public health are all exposed to damage.

Options include studying the scale and impact of land-spreading activities around Winsford and appointing teams to oversee the practice more stringently.

This would improve control of pollution activity although the extra manpower costs could prove a stumbling block.

Stuart Hogg, chairman of the Vale Royal Council for the Protection of Rural England, has written to the Environment Agency voicing his hopes for their campaign.

He states: "Land spreading of waste sounds like an environmental time-bomb and we wish to express serious concern about this practice, which is presumably a way of avoiding landfill tax.

"We trust that you will soon be able to reduce the incidents of respiratory disease in the north west - the highest in the country for many years - by tightening and enforcing emission standards."

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