Major incident declared after canal cyanide spill

Bloody hell!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yk7nd8r9do

Resident says ‘there should be big fines’.

No, there should be prison time and big fines. We can’t keep letting individuals and businesses do this to our waterways.

Yeah, read that earlier.

Looks like it’s used in a few manufacturing processes so hopefully the offending company van needs held accountable.

Not content with pouring shit into them, we are now outright poisoning the rivers. Very depressing.

Pretty sure the dead fish will give them a good idea of where the contamination originated, it’ll be well below any dangerous levels now, don’t think anyone in their right mind would go near canal water whether there was this risk or not, they’re horrific at the best of times!

Not sure how this would happen though, doubt it’s an accidental dropping of the actual chemical pre-use, and doubt there’s any discharging into a canal by local plating shops or the likes, hopefully find out soon what happened.

There cannot be many places licensed to get that stuff I would hope so a paper trail should track down the culprit making them accountable will be the issue sadly

Given the weather let’s hope theres no kids that go for a dip. :/

No idea if there are and places along there where that would happen though?

pk13Full Member
There cannot be many places licensed to get that stuff I would hope so a paper trail should track down the culprit making them accountable will be the issue sadly

I didn’t nt think Sherlock is needed for this one, just look at which companies are on the banks of the canal?

Wont be the first time it’s been done either

“Spill”?   More likely “Pour” or “Discharge”.

I read they know who and where the spill occurred. Assume it was an accident, there will be a full investigation to find out if there were unsafe processes leading to the spill.

Spill, discharge or release from wilting plants? How do they know it’s sodium cyanide since the salt dissolves in water? Did the fish die from cyanide poisoning or lack of oxygen due to a bloom? A bit early for the pitchforks, but I’m sure there are leads to identify any sources of a spill. Curiously, low (nanomolar) levels of CN are beneficial to cells.

There’s unsubstantiated rumours going round trucker’s groups that it was a delivery that went wrong.  Seems to be around a new driver hooking up to the wrong point and it dumping to a watercourse.

Either way whoever did cause it is in for a whole world of trouble when they’re found.

Sounds like they have a pretty good idea where it came from:

Walsall Council leader, Cllr Garry Perry, said the spillage had come from a factory located off Reservoir Place, near to Walsall Canal. He said: “This is a very fast moving, live investigation. Further tests were carried out last night and overnight and sent off for analysis by the Environment Agency.

“We believe it is one tank that leaked and there is a main area of concern. But what I’m told the Environment Agency is doing is supply testing from the outer areas in to detail the extent of the contaminant.”

Asked how the spillage occurred, he said: “That is the part of the investigation we are not certain of. We know where the source has come from, the source of the leak. The how and why is still being very much investigated.”

The link that quote came from is here, but beware, the ads gave my browser the bad aids https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/walsall-toxic-spill-came-revealed-29735714

Canals are sealed in waterways, nothing like rivers/streams etc. So for it to get in, wouldn’t that have to be a direct pour.?

Google maps for a minute and there are loads of metal producers all in the zone

terrible to see the devastation

If the quote above is accurate there’s one metal finisher and a leather goods factory on that road.

Canals are sealed in waterways, nothing like rivers/streams etc. So for it to get in, wouldn’t that have to be a direct pour.?

I don’t think it will be uncommon for surface drains to discharge to the canal, particularly on very old industrial buildings.   A spill, potentially hosed away could easily end up in the canal – it’s so toxic you don’t need much to have a big effect.  Tanks for this sort of stuff should all be bunded but that doesn’t mean it is, or that someone didn’t put it the wrong tank.

Canals are definitely not sealed bodies of water, it flows from the highest point to the lowest.  Streams join at various places and water moves through locks to make them work.  At the lowest point there will be an overflow to somewhere otherwise the canal would overflow.  This can all be at multiple points if the canal goes up and down via locks in various places as there will be multiple low points.  It’s all tightly controlled to maintain the water depth and a slow flow in one direction to stop stagnation and plant growth but there is always water flowing in and out somewhere.

We used to have cyanide canisters hanging about at WelshWater and had to pass the almond smell test before being alowed into treatment works. that was gas though.

In liquid form the first doors I’d knock on would be places offering case hardening of metal parts, steel working places, chemical workd… . It should be fairly easy to track the culprits down with a mix of sampling and paper trail.

It’s a metal finishing and chrome plating company

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1epn5ezx9go

Used in heat treatment for metals (particularly steels) – some use molten baths of sodium cyanide as part of case hardening steels.

Go look at those sites nearby.  And especially ones on a shut-down for maintenance, which is a prime suspect for **** something up (or tipping it intentionally into waste ground or similar).

Take a look.

Now, I love almonds (especially Bakewell puddings). But there’s a limit.

The fella using a covid fabric face mask for protection is probably dead by now.

there was recently a suddn death of thousands of fish in a peterborough river, but the offender was never caught

Canals are sealed in waterways, nothing like rivers/streams etc.

I’m afraid that’s not true. A quick look at Stratford upon Avon canal basin, for instance, will debunk it.

Canals are sealed in waterways, nothing like rivers/streams etc.

I’m afraid that’s not true.

I think for those of us that are up in years (ok, pretty much everyone on the forum) there was a period when it was sort of true that coincides with canals also being pretty bloody rank.

A canal system isnt a sealed system as it needs water flowing in and out (so that you have a slope! ) but there was a period of real neglect of canals aroind the 70s/80s which mean that a lot of stretches of canal were no long managed or even complete. So they were no longer systems.

I grew up near the ‘hotties’ – a section of the Sanky Navigation that as canal use declined had been disconnected from the rest of the canal system and there were lots of those around the country, pieces of incomplete canal that became long, fetid ponds. Becuase of the habit using waterways as a disposal method for industrial effluent, some of these were petty nasty – in St Helens there were areas where the silt in the Sankey  had been recorded as being more than 2% arsenic and even when it was operating the canal was too acidic for iron to be used for the canal gates or the boats.

The Hotties  got its name  because the Pilkington Glass factory discharged its cooling water into the canal, once the canal became blocked off that hot water had nowhere to go so the canal water was hot all year round, clouds of steam rising off it in the winter. In my only foray into angling I caught tropical fish there – when I say ‘caught’ they were actually jumping out of the water and one landed in my tackle box – I consider that a ‘catch’.

And these sorts of things were true everywhere, my pal saw a canal on fire when I lived in Birmingham

But that wouldn’t be true of any canals today because those canals will either have been restored or have now vanished. And whats also mostly vanished is the heavy industry that was polluting them. The hotties aren’t hot any more because the Glass Factory has been replaced by a Glass Museum.

there was recently a suddn death of thousands of fish in a peterborough river, but the offender was never caught

There was a similar mass fish death in St Helens when the glass production line shut down for maintenance, the canal cooled down and the all the tropical fish died. The fish had first appeared there after a pet shop closed down and the owner dumped all his stock in the canal.

there was recently a suddn death of thousands of fish in a peterborough river, but the offender was never caught

‘Fuel and solvents’ founds as source of River Nene pollution that killed 100,000 fish in Peterborough (msn.com)

I find it very difficult to believe that noone was caught.

Cant the govt reclaim/withhold the companies’/shareholders’ profits until jailtime is served and compensation paid, in pollution cases like this?