NFLA media release, 16 January 2025
The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities have urged Nuclear Waste Services and the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership to ask the residents of Millom and Haverigg for help in identifying local sites which have been flooded.
As part of its ongoing effort to locate a potential site for a Geological Disposal Facility, a repository into which Britain’s legacy and future high-level radioactive waste will be dumped, NWS intends to identity ‘Areas of Focus’ in the South Copeland Search Area which incorporates the communities of Drigg, Haverigg, Kirksanton, and Millom. These ‘Areas of Focus’ will be subject to more intensive geological investigations and in the guidance published by NWS those sites ‘with known flood risks’ will be excluded.
Following devastating local flooding in September 2017, then Cumbria County Council investigated the circumstances and the causes which ‘gathered information from affected residents by means of site visits and a flood forum where members of the public provided information’. Based on this knowledge a comprehensive report was published in the following year.
Over 1,000 local people were affected by the flooding, which damaged almost 300 homes and commercial properties. Many impacted residents joined the Millom and Haverigg Flood Action Group. The group maintains a Facebook page, with 329 current members.
In a detailed letter to the Chair of the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership and the Siting and Communities Director of NWS, NFLA Chair Councillor Lawrence O’Neill suggests that ‘it would be prudent and proper for NWS and the CP to consult with the group to help determine those parts
of the Search Area which should be excluded as Areas of Focus because they are impacted by flooding.
This is the second time that Councillor O’Neill has urged the Community Partnership and NWS to confer with local people who are passionate about their community.
In an earlier letter, he asked the two parties to ‘consult with the Millom and District Local History Society on the boundaries of the Area(s) of Search to ensure that no local heritage site will be compromised.
Many readers will have seen this week’s edition of Digging for Britain shown on BBC 2 with coverage of the efforts of the Society in discovering and uncovering some of the many important heritage sites in the Millom area. In the second programme of the latest series, Professor Alice Roberts met with Society members to talk about their amazing finds. The programme can still be seen on BBC IPlayer at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014hl0d
For more information, please contact NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email to: richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk