An internal report was even written, addressing the issue that residents might be exposed to chemicals including zinc, arsenic and boron during the clean-up operation; another, from the council’s auditor, said there was a “cavalier approach” to the clean-up and accused the council of being incompetent and negligent.
Government advice recommended that the trucks be covered, to stop the sludge leaking onto the roads; no covers were used, which meant that Corby’s roads soon became coated in it during the eight years that the cleanup operation took place.
They had all given birth to children with limb defects, which were later traced to the council’s attempts to clear up toxic waste from the defunct steelworks in the town’s centre.
As trucks full of toxic sludge from the settlement ponds rumbled through Corby to be dumped in quarries and waste sites on the town’s outskirts, a whole new range of problems came with it.
Thousands of tonnes of toxic waste, that had been generated as a result of the steelmaking process, was sitting in ‘settlement ponds’ in quarries around the area: areas of stagnant water that were full to the brim of chemicals like arsenic, cadmium and calcium.
