Axe looms over Bassetsbury Lane Allotments (From Bucks Free Press)

Cllr Collingwood and his cabinet do not represent or care for the people of this town. I believe that the Town members were prepared to fund the £20k.

This stinks of Rural led Tories looking to close site and sell off land for a quick profit and dump more homes in the town!

It’s difficult to know what to think of this – WDC claim to be closing the site because it has been contaminated by the by-products of sewage disposal there in the past. Many years ago a tenant left in my house enough hard-core **** to overfill an agricultural sized bin-liner. Like all men I enjoy looking at **** but I found it a bit too much and decided to throw it away. I could not put it out with the rest of the rubbish where my next door neighbour’s children might see it so I made a bonfire out of it one evening in the back garden. Unfortunately magazines full of shiny photographs are rich in china clay and the heavy metals used in colour printing, and after three hours it was getting dark with a lot of scorched and half-burnt **** photos on the soil around me. A wind had got up and was blowing charred bits of photos towards the hedge between my house and next door and it suddenly occurred to me that if this stuff went through the hedge my next door neighbour might not appreciate having charred hard-core **** on her lawn and if it went through the hedge on the other side into the vegetable patch of Doris, the eighty-something widow who lived there, then I would get strange looks from Doris too. In desperation I put the stuff, still smouldering, into a metal bin and buried it later.
I have often told this story and caused a smile, but when I told it to an RHS lecturer at Hampden Hall some years ago, she grew serious and told me of the dangers of eating vegetables grown on ground like that as it would be rich in lead and cadmium amongst other heavy metals. (Presumably this would apply particularly to root vegetables.) When Slough Borough Council started putting treated sewage on agricultural land under the brand name of ‘cinagro’ (spell it backwards) about forty years ago the same problem arose as plating and paint spraying shops on Slough Trading Estate, amongst other businesses, slowly flush the waste heavy metals used in their processes into the sewers along with less long-term objectionable substances like our poo. In July 2009 a BFP report said ‘Earlier this year benzopyrene and copper were found on the site. … samples from three parts of the site showed values for copper, nickel and lead higher than the permitted threshold values for land that is used for plant production.’
As I said, it’s difficult to know what to make of this – the discovery of heavy metals there is convenient for the council if it wants to sell the land and some years ago a nearby allotment holder at the junction of Bassetsbury Lane and Abbey Barn Road told me the allotment holders’ form of tenancy had been changed so that they no longer rented from the Council as individuals but as a group and could be evicted in one go as a group – he was convinced then that his allotment was going to become housing. The former Wycombe Abbey grounds/airbase at Daws Hill, the Museum, and Bassetsbury Manor have all been sold to make money for WDC or are earmarked for development – what is the Council going to do when they have sold off all the town’s patrimony?
I am inclined to disagree with the comments of ‘town raider’ - Alex Collingwood showed himself over the Booker stadium saga to be a man of plain understanding and commonsense willing to dismiss the wishes of short-sighted enthusiasts to forward local people’s real interests. The fact that Collingwood says the DQRA would simply establish the level of pollution and that it has already been established that, whatever the level, it would be impossible to obtain insurance for people to use the site until all the soil had been removed and replaced, is highly persuasive to me.
I don’t know if heavy metals are still put into the sewers for treatment like human waste, but if they are, or were in Wycombe district thirty years ago on the Bassetsbury Lane allotments site, then the ground will still be poisoned in the same way the ground in my garden corner was by the lead and cadmium in my tenant’s **** stash.
I think it is regrettable that the Bassetsbury Lane allotments are being closed but heavy metal poisoning has unpleasant long-term effects particularly on children and I would be reluctant to take a risk with it.
Pollution of the ground making it unsuitable for allotments is convenient for a council intent on building as many houses as it can but if the council has given an accurate account of the state of affairs and there IS pollution there, then the allotment holders - with the very best of motives - may be making a mistake when they wish to continue growing food at the site.

ImpeturbableLawrence wrote:
It’s difficult to know what to think of this – WDC claim to be closing the site because it has been contaminated by the by-products of sewage disposal there in the past. Many years ago a tenant left in my house enough hard-core **** to overfill an agricultural sized bin-liner. Like all men I enjoy looking at **** but I found it a bit too much and decided to throw it away. I could not put it out with the rest of the rubbish where my next door neighbour’s children might see it so I made a bonfire out of it one evening in the back garden. Unfortunately magazines full of shiny photographs are rich in china clay and the heavy metals used in colour printing, and after three hours it was getting dark with a lot of scorched and half-burnt **** photos on the soil around me. A wind had got up and was blowing charred bits of photos towards the hedge between my house and next door and it suddenly occurred to me that if this stuff went through the hedge my next door neighbour might not appreciate having charred hard-core **** on her lawn and if it went through the hedge on the other side into the vegetable patch of Doris, the eighty-something widow who lived there, then I would get strange looks from Doris too. In desperation I put the stuff, still smouldering, into a metal bin and buried it later.
I have often told this story and caused a smile, but when I told it to an RHS lecturer at Hampden Hall some years ago, she grew serious and told me of the dangers of eating vegetables grown on ground like that as it would be rich in lead and cadmium amongst other heavy metals. (Presumably this would apply particularly to root vegetables.) When Slough Borough Council started putting treated sewage on agricultural land under the brand name of ‘cinagro’ (spell it backwards) about forty years ago the same problem arose as plating and paint spraying shops on Slough Trading Estate, amongst other businesses, slowly flush the waste heavy metals used in their processes into the sewers along with less long-term objectionable substances like our poo. In July 2009 a BFP report said ‘Earlier this year benzopyrene and copper were found on the site. … samples from three parts of the site showed values for copper, nickel and lead higher than the permitted threshold values for land that is used for plant production.’
As I said, it’s difficult to know what to make of this – the discovery of heavy metals there is convenient for the council if it wants to sell the land and some years ago a nearby allotment holder at the junction of Bassetsbury Lane and Abbey Barn Road told me the allotment holders’ form of tenancy had been changed so that they no longer rented from the Council as individuals but as a group and could be evicted in one go as a group – he was convinced then that his allotment was going to become housing. The former Wycombe Abbey grounds/airbase at Daws Hill, the Museum, and Bassetsbury Manor have all been sold to make money for WDC or are earmarked for development – what is the Council going to do when they have sold off all the town’s patrimony?
I am inclined to disagree with the comments of ‘town raider’ - Alex Collingwood showed himself over the Booker stadium saga to be a man of plain understanding and commonsense willing to dismiss the wishes of short-sighted enthusiasts to forward local people’s real interests. The fact that Collingwood says the DQRA would simply establish the level of pollution and that it has already been established that, whatever the level, it would be impossible to obtain insurance for people to use the site until all the soil had been removed and replaced, is highly persuasive to me.
I don’t know if heavy metals are still put into the sewers for treatment like human waste, but if they are, or were in Wycombe district thirty years ago on the Bassetsbury Lane allotments site, then the ground will still be poisoned in the same way the ground in my garden corner was by the lead and cadmium in my tenant’s **** stash.
I think it is regrettable that the Bassetsbury Lane allotments are being closed but heavy metal poisoning has unpleasant long-term effects particularly on children and I would be reluctant to take a risk with it.
Pollution of the ground making it unsuitable for allotments is convenient for a council intent on building as many houses as it can but if the council has given an accurate account of the state of affairs and there IS pollution there, then the allotment holders - with the very best of motives - may be making a mistake when they wish to continue growing food at the site.

Oh dear - missing word = P*O*R*N*O*G*R*A*P*H*
Y

(I am sorry the allotments are going whatever the reason.)

Arsehole. (Test.)

If the council spent £20k+ on this, they'll be supported by a few and condemned by the many. Does that mean they shouldn't do it? I would say they shouldn't. And I live on Bassetsbury Lane.

hm1 wrote:
If the council spent £20k+ on this, they'll be supported by a few and condemned by the many. Does that mean they shouldn't do it? I would say they shouldn't. And I live on Bassetsbury Lane.

The fact that they would be condemned by the many doesn't mean they shouldn't do it - but the science - in the form of soil tests already taken - some by independent organisations - would seem to make it a waste of time to check it once again.