Office to rent in Lewes

Lewes Forum thread

Go on, tell 'em what you think

Lewes Forum New message

Plumpton College pollution incidents (again)

On 5 Dec 2016 at 10:42pm Farmed trout wrote:

Plumpton college training for reality. Educating the polluting, profit obsessed rural oafs of tomorrow

On 6 Dec 2016 at 5:25am Lewesian wrote:

Already being discussed below, why start another post?

On 6 Dec 2016 at 12:33pm River Boy wrote:

The last thread is nearly full and is disappearing down the page, so why not! :-)

It is beginning to look like the alarms went off on one of the slurry tanks and a student panicked and pumped it out onto the frozen fields where, instead of sinking in hundreds of thousands of litres of slurry slid into the Plumpton Mills Stream killing virtually all life in the important streams for a 10km stretch. The Environment Agency investigation will get to the bottom of it though, no doubt.

It does beggar belief that a college that teaches fisheries management and the farmers of tomorrow could set such an excruciatingly bad example. Eight slurry-related pollution incidents over only five years is nothing short of criminal and it is to be hoped that the various interested bodies with their eye on Plumpton College gain a prosecution for Environmental and/or Criminal Damage and that the college is fined heavily and made to foot the bill for the decades of damage they have caused to our watercourse. Ideally their dairy unit at Wales Farm will be shut down too, as they've proved time and time again that they are incapable of managing it. Plumpton College has had its chances to improve the unit, but not taken them.

On 6 Dec 2016 at 1:30pm Water Baby wrote:

Thank you River Boy, that does seem like a logical explanation . The whole debacle(s) over the years are indeed criminal.

On 6 Dec 2016 at 3:11pm Barcombe beat wrote:

2 days ago, Bevern Stream at Redbridge Weir was opaque dark brown. Today around 2pm you could see to the bottom. I take it that's an improvement.
What's the current state of play? Is the Bevern Stream really ruined?

On 6 Dec 2016 at 4:53pm Zebedee wrote:

@ Barcombe Beat.

Yes the eighth slurry spill in five years from top polluters Plumpton College has destroyed all but the smallest insect life in both the Plumpton Mill Stream and the Bevern Stream for a 10km stretch between Plumpton College and pretty much the Ouse. There are now no gudgeon, lampreys, stone loaches, sticklebacks, bullheads, eels, brown trout, chub, minnows, roach, perch or indeed any other species of fish in that whole stretch. Not until they start moving in from unaffected tributaries will it ever recover... and this is likely to take decades.

The reason the Red Bridge looks clear now is because the 1km slug of slurry pollution has passed through the sluice. The Environment Agency have been busy sucking it out at the Beam Bridge half a mile upstream.

The Environment Agency are running an information point in the Barcombe Mills car park. I got the information from there. Have a chat with them when you are passing.

On 6 Dec 2016 at 7:29pm Hmmmm....... wrote:

With the dry winter & autumn we've had where has the water come from???

On 7 Dec 2016 at 12:40pm Annette Curtin-Twitcher wrote:

This is so sad.
It makes you wonder wtf they are teaching the farmers of tomorrow.

On 7 Dec 2016 at 8:09pm River Boy wrote:

Plumpton College just don't give a flying monkeys about their environment. Even their sewage treatment works pumps out high levels of ammonia on an ongoing basis (it's ammonia that kills the watercourses).

Latest.. is that Plumpton College slurry pollution has killed 1200 fish in the two streams. See Sussex Express article in link below.

Check it out here »

On 7 Dec 2016 at 10:29pm Big Bertha wrote:

More reporting on Plumpton College slurry pollution incident.....

Check it out here »

On 8 Dec 2016 at 5:59pm Towney wrote:

With respect....both of those articles are written by trainee journos who never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
I know how bad the incident is, it certainly doesn't need ameteur rags like this to start turning everything into a national disaster.

On 18 Jan 2017 at 6:50pm mike Deacon wrote:

Latest news is they've done it again today, 18/01/17, Cow slurry in the plumpton mill stream on top of the few seatrout that have made it up and on top of the eggs that were laid in recent weeks.