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A FORMER toxic waste tip where up to 300 barrels of lethal cyanide are feared to be buried is to undergo soil testing to check for poison.
A massive fire destroyed the disused Pinegrove Country Club earlier this month, which stands on the site in Stannington.
The barrels of sodium cyanide are believed to have been dumped more than 30 years ago. The substance can be fatal if inhaled or swallowed and when decomposing can turn into toxic and highly flammable hydrogen cyanide gas.
The work must be carried out before proposals to build 46 homes and a children's play area on the land are considered.
Sheffield Council has told developers they must provide an in-depth analysis of the ground beneath and around the former Pinegrove Club as part of their planning application.
A full risk assessment, toxicology report, and any proposals for remedial works to make the land safe for building, must be made before plans can be considered, say council bosses.
Capricorn Homes Ltd has submitted an application to build a small housing estate on the former tip. It wants to build 34 townhouses around a central square and 12 fronting Myers Grove Lane. Most of the properties would have four or five bedrooms.
The company has acknowledged the work needs to be done. In a report in support of its application it says: "The whole site is located on a contaminated waste tip and as such requires remediation prior to any future development and to prevent further discharge of contaminants into the River Loxley."
The land is officially earmarked as a contaminated site, although nobody is sure what the tip contains.
Locals say illegal tipping was rife in the late 1960s and 1970s when a former site gatekeeper, nicknamed 'Cyanide Sid' was in the pub.
One resident, David Wilson, aged 61, of Stannington Road, said he witnessed the cyanide tipping more than 30 years ago, although he didn't realise what it was at the time.
He said: "It came in black canisters about two and a half feet tall with skull and crossbones and the word 'Verboten' written on. There were hundreds of them piled up and some had split open. White cyanide pellets that looked like torpedo sweets skewed about like confetti. The next thing we knew they were all buried."
There was a major alert in 1972 when a lorry driver phoned police to say his son had dumped a load at the site. Police sealed off the land and found 10 barrels containing sodium cyanide.
Sodium cyanide is used in the steel industry, but can be turned into a deadly nerve agent used by international terrorists to produce sarin, which can cause paralysis and instant death.
The Department of the Environment decided it was safe to leave what was still buried underground to decompose by natural biological reaction. Tests on water on the River Loxley proved the area to be safe.
Eventually the whole site was covered with soil and levelled and the Pinegrove Club was built on part of the land in 1981.
Today, Stannington Lib Dem councillor David Baker said he wanted to know what was dumped there: "I have asked council officers for full information surrounding the background of this site and what is going to be done. The law on contaminated land has changed since the 1970s and I want to be assured that the considerations of local people will be put first."
Over the years, bullets and various other military scrap has also been found on the site by children.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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