The Environment Agency is supposed to know about water.
Professor Brassington says a quarry at Straitgate Farm would cause surrounding private water supplies to become too acidic to drink.
In June 2020, the Environment Agency advised Devon County Council, in an email now released through an FOI request, that Professor Brassington:
…asserts that quarrying would cause the pH to exceed the Drinking Water Standard, but a Drinking Water Standard for pH does not actually exist.
However, the Environment Agency was wrong.
In a letter last week to the Council, Professor Brassington wrote:
At the moment the acidity of the water (measured by its pH) is low around 6.5 pH units. The EA state that there are no regulations regarding the pH of drinking water, however they are wrong. The Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 2016 for England in Schedule 2 Indicator parameters states on line 7 that the Hydrogen ion should lie between 9.5 (maximum) and 6.5 (minimum) as measured as a pH value at the consumers’ taps...
Reducing the travel time will mean that less carbonate materials are dissolved and so the pH will fall. I intuitively feel that it could get to pH 5 or even less.
...as the pH scale is logarithmic the difference between pH 6.5 and pH 5 is fifteen-fold
It is my view that Devon County Council should not grant permission for this proposal as it will result in severe problems to private water supplies that will become too acidic to drink.
Here are The Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 2016 and The Private Water Supplies (England) Regulations 2016 which do indeed state – just as Prof Brassington said – that tap water should have a pH between 6.5 and 9.5:
How embarrassing that the Environment Agency of all people should not know this. How much else do they claim to know, but don’t? After all, the Environment Agency has been taken in by Aggregate Industries' assertion that groundwater speeds through the unsaturated zone in a matter of days, when peer-reviewed scientific papers say it takes years.
Devon County Council has previously said it would be "guided by the views of the Environment Agency who retain professionals qualified in this technical field."
Where does this leave the Council, who has put such faith in the technical competence of the Environment Agency?
Where does this leave the Council, knowing Aggregate Industries’ proposal to quarry Straitgate Farm would cause private water supplies to become too acidic to drink, for more than 100 people, for businesses, and for Grade I listed Cadhay?
Where does this leave the Council, when the S106 Draft Heads of Terms – the only such document so far seen by stakeholders, with little more than two weeks before determination – provides no remedy should pH breach unacceptable levels?
The Environment Agency's proposed conditions, 31 January 2020, say:
In its water quality provisions, the S106 agreement shall include pH.
The draft S106 Heads of Terms shared with stakeholders references pH only once:
The content of an annual monitoring report that will include: f) A review of water quality data, including pH levels;
But being contained in a monitoring report, which may or may not be delivered years late, is one thing. Doing anything about it is a completely different matter.
