We were hit on Monday night by some kind of oil or diesel dumping. Wherever it’s come from, be it a ship or from a land drain that empties out into the Forth, it’s all ended up on our local shoreline. The smell is nauseating and giving me headaches, and others are also suffering. My neighbour is asthmatic too, but worse than me, and she’s not been able to leave her house all week. Working from home has many benefits, but it does mean I’m stuck here, all day, with the smell of oil in the air. The guys doing the clear up are doing an amazing job. I hate to think how much it’s all costing, as there’s about 500 tonnes of contaminated material to remove (we may not have any beaches after this…all the sand is contaminated). I may have to go out in the car just to get a lungful of normal air.
That sounds awful 
I can’t even imagine not being able to escape from it all I hope that they can at least eliminate the smell as soon as possible and that someone is made accountable for the problem. x
That’s awful, I imagine there going to be a big impact on the wildlife too. I hope they find whoever is responsible and make them pay for the damage/ clear up, and then fine them a big amount afterwards too…
All the lovely bird life seems to have disappeared. There was one poor oil covered goose on the pier on Tuesday but he flew off and wouldn’t let anyone catch him. We’ve not got any of our normal sounds at the moment, the whole place feels dead. Normally I can hear and see curlews, oyster catchers, ducks and geese, cormorants and sandpipers, along with herons and of course a billion gulls. Even the gulls have mostly moved away. Our garden bird population has dropped as well. I’ve not seen my tribe of long-tailed tits all week. They used to come in a gang of about 20, and they’ve totally vanished.
The contamination is definitely being controlled as well as they can do - it’s covered with tarps. Unfortunately it was piled up on a grassy part of the village so has soaked through into the soil there too, and that now also needs to be removed. They had no option - the tide’s been really high and there hasn’t been any beach for them to leave the material on until it can be collected. What a mess. Whoever did the dumping better hope the authorities catch them before us villagers do…
That’s awful, I really hope things recover quickly…
How horrible. I hope they find the source. What a nasty thing to do, if it was done on purpose. I hope you can get out for a bit just so you can breathe. It seems that is what the birds have done. I don’t blame them.
I don’t suppose they’ll ever find out who did it, especially if it was deliberate. There is a chance it was accidental, but it would still be a massive fine, so whoever it was will probably keep quiet in either case. It’s having quite an impact on our local businesses - the pubs and cafe are normally busy as anything on a Friday lunchtime, but nobody who comes to take a peek at all the big machinery fancies staying for lunch. The dog walkers are all going elsewhere too, as there’s no access to any of our four beaches at the moment. It’s all rather surreal. Still, we made the BBC news website. Fame at last.
It sounds awful.
That’s awful. The environment agency are very good at finding the source of such events and they’ll do their best I’m sure to find out what happened.
Years ago we were walking along a river and spotted a small oil slick coming from a tributary into our tidal river. I phoned the E E and gave them my details. It must have been nearly a year later when they contacted me to tell me that a culprit had been put on trial and convicted. Turned out to be two large cans of dirty chip oil had been tipped into the river some miles upstream and they’d left the cans on the river bank. That’s how they were caught.
So hopefully your pollution will be cleaned up and the cause of your damaged environment will be fully investigated.
Thanks. The good thing is that the clean up has gone really well so far. We’ve been helped by the relatively calm weather, and of course the teams doing the work have been very dedicated. There’s a slight smell of oil still in the air now, but nothing like it was a few days ago, and that is bliss. Birds are actually returning to the areas that were right on the edge of the spill, that were “easy” to clean up, so that’s lifted everyone’s spirits. Someone took a trip out to the rocks at low tide to check and the shellfish populations don’t seem to be damaged at all. It all points to the spill coming from a pipe that opens out about a hundred metres off shore, which means they can follow it back inland and hopefully find out where the product got into the system. If they can do that, they can check cctv in the area and identify vehicles etc.