The Epynt Disaster

War is declared on the innocent people of an entire region

This report brings into focus part of the disaster which has been brought about by the Foot-and-Mouth disease in Britain. Although the Government is only too keen to boast its success in combatting the disease in time for the June 7 elections,the truth is that the killing, the burials and the burning continue.In Talgarth and the Brecon area thousands of animals are being slaughtered as Slaughter on Suspicion (SOS)cases.Too much contempt for both the rural population and their animals has already been shown,and cynicism in the service of politics and big business appears to know no bounds.Not only have millions of healthy animals been killed,but large areas of land have been contaminated,unknown numbers of people have had their health damaged,their rights to free speech and assembly violated,and been irrevocably hurt in their pride and dignity.

at/lw/ph The two villages Sennybridge and Trecastle are situated in the Brecon Beacons National Park,a unique hilly landscape abundant with wildlife along the rivers and streams,which are teeming with fish.Flocks of sheep graze on the pastureland among the hills.This is one of the centres of sheep farming in Britain.Every year thousands of tourists from all over the world come here to enjoy the walking,hiking,fishing and exceptional hospitality of the local people.

In the midst of this National Park lies Epynt, an army training area for the Special Air Services.The area is a watershed for two major rivers providing private and public drinking water.

Epynt was chosen as a site for a burial pit for 170,000 carcasses with a capacity for up to 900,000.The hill also serves as a burn site with a pyre 500 metres long and 20 metres wide where 5,000 sheep or 900 cattle are burned at a time.Weeks before the first case of FMD in Britain was announced,contractors were already placed on standby,coal and timber merchants were contacted.

The official geological expertise claimed that the ground (clay)was not porous.But everybody in the area knew that Epynt has a complex geology.The authorities did not consult with the local bodies who had information which would have avoided an environmental hazard.The Epynt Action Group,a local body of citizens concerned about the impact of the intended burial pit and burn site on this FMD-free area with its unspoilt natural environment,told them im- mediately that their plans would not work and that the pit would leak.The original plan had been to line the pit with clay.Despite protests, this plan was abandoned.In such cases two standard practices are used for pits:1.They are lined with clay.2.They are not situated near a watercourse.

After five days the monitor of the community found contamination in one of the boreholes, which are made to check on any leaking. The carcass burial was suspended, the villagers were told there were 7,000 carcasses in the pit. These carcasses were then moved within the pit onto temporary plastic lining material, which was not welded together. Imme diately the contamination was noticed, the Epynt Action Group started the legal process of seeking an injunction to stop any further burying. MAFF then reported they had stopped all burying, and as a result the Action Group withdrew their injunction. When the villagers then went to 'judicial review' over the pyres, all the burning stopped. The dan ger was that the villagers would have won a court case, which might have attracted unwelcome coverage in the media.

The initial plan had been to clay-line the pit, but the nature of the ground made this impossible, so MAFF turned to a large civil engineering company called Helcrow to design a pit which would not leak. The engineering project became much more complex and a large amount of machinery was brought onto the site. In the end, the complex nature of the plan and the time needed to construct it, caused them to give up the idea of using the burial pit at all.

Meanwhile, a second contamination in a tributary of the river Towy had occurred, but it was not announced. This contamination was 1.5km from the pit and had reached this location within the space of 5 days. The decision was then taken to increase the rate of consumption on the pyre to maximum, and this continued for some days, while the number o f carcasses placed in the burial pit on the temporary lining grew to 20,000. Following the threat of legal action it was stated that no new carcasses would be taken to the site and burning would be suspended once all the carcasses that were on the site had been burned. When MAFF then tried to move the carcasses from the temporary lining of the pitm to burn, they found that they were so decomposed that it was considered hazardous to try and move them to the burning area. The decision was taken to burn the carcasses in the pit. The Epynt Action Group pointed out that this would be both very dangerous and problematical because it would be difficult to control temperatures. The burning started and the Epynt Action Group were told that this was the least hazardous option.

Shortly afterwards MAFF decided that it was not possible to burn them in the pit and they would have to be removed to the burn site, which they had originally said was too hazardous an operation. The Epynt Action Group asked MAFF to remove the carcasses from the site since they had decomposed beyond a state fit for burning. If they did burn them t hey would have to remove the remains to a controlled site afterwards anyway. Nevertheless, they continued to pursue their policy of burning, which involved various hazards: Apart from the dangers of picking them up with a dumper truck and putting them in a carcass lorry to transfer to the burn site, an excessive amount of burning material was obvi ously required per carcass, creating an even greater public health hazard with the smoke. This smoke included a lot of toxins arising from the burning of railway sleepers treated with arsenic obtained from Eastern Europe.

By the end of April MAFF seemed to have decided it would be easier to place the decomposed carcasses in lorries and remove them from the site, as suggested by the Epynt Action Group. However, they have created a hazard on top of the hill-a pile of ash one metre high and 500 metres long of very toxic material, which will have to be removed and take n to a special site. This pile is also 20 metres wide and if the wind blows, the ash is scattered onto ground which will inevitably mean that this ash ends up in a tributary of the Towy River.

Water from this area is drunk by a large number of people in large towns like Swansea (approx. 300,000 inhabitants), Carmarthen and Brecon.

One consequence of the way in which the authorities have proceeded is that all property has lost substantial value, although FMD is not in the area at all.

21 days into the burning only one environmental control monitor, a static one, had been placed in the area. This monitor catches what comes if the wind blows towards it. What actually happened for most of the time was that there was very little wind, and the smoke blew into the valleys, and lay there for days. After 21 days into the burning four m ore monitors suddenly appeared, but they could not be placed in the valleys 'because their mobile phones to transmit the data will not work in the valleys'. However, it was debatable whether this would matter, since by the time the monitors were operational, the burning might have stopped.

The public health officer responsible for the region is the Chief Health Officer of the Health Authority for South Wales. He was approached on 24 April with a number of questions including one concerning the monitoring of health in the Epynt region. He informed the Epynt Action Group that he had only heard they were burning on the Epynt on 19 Apri l. He was not aware that the fires were large, i.e. that more than 250 cattle were burned at a time, and that he had no intention of doing anything unless instructed to do so by the National Assembly of Wales.

As a consequence of the smoke emitted from the pyres about 20 people were admitted to hospital, most of them subsequently released. They were suffering from diarrhoea, vomiting, respiratory problems and skin irritation. A large number of the local population have suffered similar complaints without going to hospital. These are the short-term probl ems, but worries about the long-term consequences like cancer and birth defects prevail.

Resistance forms

April is for farmers the middle of their lambing season. Most of the people in the area are self-employed, running their own small businesses. When MAFF's plans descended upon them, everybody stopped working to launch the Epynt campaign.

Right at the beginning of the protest the people of Trecastle took control of the road to the site. The lorries were subjected to stop-and-go traffic. Clutches became defect. Suddenly somebody manned a bulldozer working on the site. He crashed into one of the demonstrator's cars and then ran over a police car. The usual driver of the bulldozer has denied any involvement in the incident. His finger prints, of course, were on the vehicle because he was using it every day. As a result of this incident the protesters had to withdraw and allow the lorries to pass through. This incident was also the only thing that was reported by the BBC and had the effect that for 48 hours it was impossible to get anybody interested in what was happening at Sennybridge and Trecastle. Everybody thought they were madmen.

To defend themselves and give themselves a platform a proper constitution for the Epynt Action Group was worked out. The group includes farmers, local businessmen, and residents. One of the farmers was elected chairman, and regular meetings held. A liaison group was also formed to communicate with the army and the police. It was also this group th at arranged for a monitor to visit the burial and burn site every second day and report back. A resource centre was set up, and after only 16 hours they also had their own website. They invited the Welsh Agriculture Minister, Carwyn Jones, to meet with them.

In order to draw attention to their plight the villagers organized a mock funeral. 500 people walked to the church, 3 ministers were there, and everybody sang the Welsh song 'Bread of Heaven'. It was a very moving scene. TV coverage only showed the backs of people.

The carcass lorries passing through the villages on their way to the site stank so abominably that even the policemen lining the roads had to cover their noses, and they gave schoolchildren masks although they were not supposed to do so. Lorries got lost too, there were lorries all over the place, going up and down the hills, spilling disinfectant and blood in this FMD-free area.

Mothers block convoys

In Trecastle the villagers hung up boards and banners along the street where they themselves have been demonstrating for weeks. They have been out since early April in all weathers. Most of them are not farmers, they are the people of Trecastle, women, children. In Sennybridge when it first started women lay on the road and stopped the lorries fo r 45 minutes. Then they were physically removed. The protesting mothers also had to have their children out with them after school finished; a lot of the children had to be sick from the stench of the decomposing carcasses. The local authorities then shut the school saying 'they were closing early for half-term'. The effect was that the mothers wh o were demonstrating now had to look after their children during the day as well.

On the morning of 25 April coal lorries went up the road, foam-sealed, so protesters thought they were carrying carcasses. The drivers were extremely rude, going through the village at a ridiculous speed; no speed limits were observed.

The 'Animal Farm' government moves in

500 policemen and 200 soldiers were moved into the area from all over Britain. Plain-clothes policemen took photographs of anybody suspected of organising the resistance, of anybody using a mobile, and they also blocked the whole village from both ends, only allowing people through who lived in the village. A green Volvo was parked 50 metres from the resource centre of the Epynt Action Group, loaded with communications equipment and bristling with radio masts. People who had never before been involved in a demonstration suddenly felt as if they were living in a police state:

'I believe my phone is tapped for the noises it makes and the strange way it behaves - there's a delay with incoming and outgoing calls before they are connected. After approximately 60 seconds the line gets cut off sometimes. A very serious virus went right into the server of our website. It did not come through email.'

There has been complete control of the media in this case. Good contacts could not help get the events that took place into the papers. Remarkably, the BBC have a camera team on the spot with a satellite transmitting station. Every meeting is filmed and recorded from start to finish, but nothing appears in the evening news-apart from some scenic s hots.

This invitation was sent to the Welsh Agriculture Minister, Carwyn Jones, so that he would have the opportunity to share the soup that people had been forced to stomach. (‘Cawl’ = Welsh for ‘soup’)