Weston Village North and South quarries legacy.

SOG owned fields.
ICI sold the Heath complex and it became known as SOG. As part of the sale ICI gave SOG 3 fields which are owned by the pension fund.
The owner of SOG, wants to develop on these fields and this is what alarmed me and made me take the time to put into writing the situation around the quarries based on my experience.
The council at the time, 2019, knew of the quarries but did not know the details, clearly the details were being lost over time.

Plume migration.
During the discussions with ICI, the Environment Agency and other professional bodies a major concern at the time was plume migration.
As the waste is in porous rock, is subject to the pressure of the cap above and the effects of the water table from below it will be compressed and forced out into the surrounding ground, albeit below ground level.
The concern at the time, and probably still is, was how far this could actually go. Given that the estimated volume of waste is 3 Billion Tons, and Runcorn is on the Sherwood sandstone plane it could go a significant distance.

Demolition.
As has already been said the only real option for the properties effected by the contamination was demolition.
The gas leaking into the houses has a long term effect on people. Within industry the long term exposure to chemicals is set depending on to toxicity of the chemical itself. Personally I was monitored during my time at Rocksavage and anyone who was showing signs of build up of a chemical in a blood test was given a break from the particular plant.
It would be impossible to do this with people living in these houses so they were purchased and demolished.

Project Pathway.

The capping of the quarries.
In the late 1960s ICI stopped using the lagoons in the North quarry.
From then until around 1976 both the North and South quarries were used for disposal of redundant plant and equipment.
Around 1976 the decision was taken to seal and cap off the quarries.
Firstly they were filled with fly ash from the works power station which was still burning coal.
Once this had levelled out it was covered with 4 to 6 inches of soil. Mick Toft was tasked with seeding both quarries to encourage grass to grow.
For approximately 2 years the university of Aberystwyth came and took samples of the ground to make sure that the cap had sealed the contents.
Once they had proven it had worked the quarries were left to return to nature and that is when the fencing was erected and horses began to graze on them.

This is the location of the first two houses on Weston Road immediately after the white house.
The sludge that was tipped into the quarry was pumped from the works in a pipe that was bored through the rock. It was not lined with anything but a simple bored tube in the rock.
Some time in 1960 an operator in the quarry closed the wrong shutter and this blocked the outlet from the pipe resulting in the pump pumping against a dead end.
The result of this was to open a crack in the rock directly under these two houses which flooded the sub floors and lifting the actual floor boards on the ground floor.
This made the houses unfit to live in and ICI bought them at that time.
In 1970 they sold them to members of the public.
In 2000 I went into one of them and the smell of solvents was extremely strong, the front garden had a vent fitted by ICI some time in the 1980s to try to draw the fumes from underneath the houses.
This obviously wasn't working and the smell from this vent was also very strong.
It was no surprise that these two houses were demolished.

The North quarry.
The North quarry is by far the largest of the rwo Weston quarries and has the biggest legacy of contamination in it.
The following photographs try to explain what it was used for and what the association risks are.

The South quarry

One of the most asked questions is what is actually in the quarries and where did it come from.
To answer that you need to understand what Castner Kellner (CK) and Rocksavage (RSV) actually made.
CK made Caustic, Chlorine and Hydrogen by electrolysis of Brine. This is putting a large current of electricity through salt water. The negative connection for the electricity was generated by floating the Brine on Mercury.
Caustic is a very desirable product, but Chlorine was always an issue due to its toxicity, so the East end of CK and Rocksavage was developed to burn Chlorine and turn it into Chlorinated Solvents.
Most solvents are very light and vaporise quickly, just like spilled petrol. There is however a heavy sludge waste and this is not usable so has to be disposed off.
This is the sludge that is in the North quarry.
ICI had lagoons in the quarry to allow any remaining light vapour to evaporate leaving the heavy sludge behind.
This is what remains in the North quarry, plus redundant plant and equipment.
The South quarry was never used for lagooning, so has redundant plant and equipment dumped in it. There is probably a considerable amount of Mercury in this quarry, which in itself is harmful. The South quarry was seen as less harmful than the North but it is still a concern if it is disturbed.

Borehole map from 2000. The boreholes themselves will be a separate post, the purpose of this is to show the location and size of the North and South quarries.

History of the North and South quarries.
These quarries were worked for sandstone, one on either side of Weston Road.
The South quarry was much smaller than the North quarry running from what is now a footpath running from Weston Road down to the expressway and along Weston Road, behind Grangeway garage and ending at Banks Lane.
The North quarry goes from the houses in Weston Road across from Grangeside garage, along the road behind what was Quarry Bank Terrace in a Northern direction, to the path that leads into Runcorn hill. In a North Westerly direction it runs up to the Brine reservior and to the fields by the park. There was no boundary between the North quarry and the quarries that are now Runcorn hills.
The quarries were abandoned when the need for sandstone dwindled and the sandstone became more difficult to access.
The North quarry was at such a depth that it hit an aquifer or the water table of the Mersey.
This is a very important point that will be discussed at length on the post regarding plume migration.
ICI bought the quarries to use them as a dump for chemical waste in the 1930s.
The photograph shows an ICI borehole map from 2000 to try to explain the locations, it still has the demolished houses shown on it.
Later posts will detail the boreholes and the subsequent demolition of the properties along Weston Road.

Welcome to the Weston Quarry legacy page.
This was set up as a way of gathering and archiving the history of the quarries in Weston.
In 2000 the consequences of what had been done in these quarries with regards to contaminated waste disposal became public knowledge.
22 years later it is fading into history and some regulatory bodies are not as knowledgeable as they should be.

The purpose of this page is to keep the knowledge live, not to scare people or cause distress but to ensure that if any person or company in the future tries to build on these fields the residents are aware of the potential issues.

Some rules.

People are encouraged to add to this page, but please be factual. The easiest way for any developer in the future to undermine the information on this page is to discredit it, so an easy win for them could be damaging for the village.

There is no blame attached to anyone. ICI were following the rules as they were at the time. Thankfully things have changed for the better over time.

As a starting point I have tried to be as accurate as possible with dates etc. Where an approximation has been used I have said so.

The bulk of my information comes from meetings with ICI and regulatory bodies from 2000 onwards.
A massive thanks to Mick Toft who has a working knowledge of these quarries and has been very helpful with details and dates.

Weston Village North and South quarries legacy. updated their business hours.