February 27th – A lot of the history of Brownhills, Walsall Wood and Aldridge is about what lies beneath. Coal, clay, industrial effluent and landfill have shaped particularly the borderlands between Walsall Wood and Aldridge. Where brick marls were abundant, soon voids in the ground where they had been extracted were too. Into these holes, we tipped refuse in huge quantities, as the remaining clay made a good seal against the contaminant waste.
In the early days, the landfill and waste disposal industry was unregulated, haphazard, and somewhat akin to the Wild West. Waste was put anywhere, and unmonitored. These days, it’s a tightly monitored industry that has to look after its dirty secrets.
At the Vigo Utopia landfill site just off Coppice Lane, gas turbine engines run 24 hours a day, driving electricity generators from the gasses harvested from the decomposing rubbish. This produces significant amounts of power from 2 generator sets in converted shipping containers, employing gas that would once have been merely vented to the atmosphere.
Nearby, a series of bunds and pools lined with thick rubber gather water and liquid pumped from deep within the mound. This poisonous soup is called ‘leechate’, and is allowed to settle out before being disposed of as hazardous effluent. Again, years ago, such concerns were not addressed and sites were allowed to pollute groundwater uncontrolled.
This is ugly, scarred landscape; but we are looking after it much better than we used to.
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