MOGDEN OPEN DAY

Took a break from campaigning yesterday afternoon to give a lift to Murad Qureshi (GLA Labour lead on Environment issues) to Mogden's open day. Never have I seen so many PR people in one place - well certainly not at Modgen which seems to have about 3 people working there on a normal day. Full info marquee and bus trip round the site.

Although I thought I had a good grasp of how our sewage is treated, I now understand a lot better. Those who live with the stench from the works will ask - did we do the right thing to grant planning permission to the extension? Well yesterday didn't change my view. Tens of millions have been spent on smell reduction, the expenditure came about after Ann Keen and I brought then Environment Minister Larry Whitty to the site around 2003, when the smell and mosquitoes were unbearable.

There is still the issue of the remaining uncovered storm tanks - used for storage of raw sewage when surges of run-off mean the works cannot handle the volume. With the extension to the works agreed, residents will have to wait until 2013 for the old storm tanks to be used less than 6 times a year. And if they are needed more often - the planning condition means they will have to be covered. If we had refused permission to TW they would not have been able to expand the capacity of the site, and residents would have suffered indefinitely, or TW would have got their permission on appeal with much weaker conditions imposed.