The site, formerly used for in-house waste by chemicals group ICI, is now owned by Impetus Remediation Ltd with Shanks acting as waste management partner.

Roland Williams, Director of Contaminated Land Services for Shanks, told edie news that at the moment they were concentrating on one big contract: “We’re removing over 100,000 tonnes of contaminated waste from an old smokeless fuel site in South Wales for our core business at present for this site – the Abercwmboi Phurnacite contract. Most sites in the south would struggle, environmentally, to cope with this sort of waste.”

However, the site will be allowed to accept 500,000 tonnes of hazardous waste every year for landfill, and has a total capacity of 2.5 million cubic metres.

At the moment, Mr Williams said, the company was concentrating on disposing of contaminated soils but is looking to open a strategic network of “Soil Hospitals” to treat and re-use such material.

The first such treatment centre is due to open in Scotland in late March/early April, and will offer storage, thermal treatment, bioremediation, soil washing, stabilisation and solidification processes. It will import contaminated soils to be re-sold and re-used.

The number of sites available for disposal of hazardous waste dropped significantly last July when the EU Landfill Directive came into force (see related story). The Directive banned the co-disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste meaning the number of sites that could accept hazardous waste fell from around 200, to about 10.

By David Hopkins

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