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SEPA sets deadline for Dalgety Bay remediation plans

22 November 2011

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) today chaired a meeting of the Dalgety Bay Forum, and laid out its expectation for the Ministry of Defence to come back with a credible long-term remediation plan for the area by the end of February 2012. 

SEPA presented the findings of its recent monitoring work, and informed the Forum members that work was carried out at the weekend to remove further high activity radioactive sources from the Dalgety Bay beach. This work was carried out on Saturday (19 November) and three high activity sources were recovered, one of which gave an extremely high in-field reading of 76MBq (Mega Becquerels). The other two sources measured 3.6MBq and 4.5MBq. They have been removed to a laboratory and are currently being analysed.

Dr Paul Dale, Principal Policy Officer, said:

"SEPA believes that the Ministry of Defence is responsible for the radioactive material present at Dalgety Bay, and as such Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) is the responsible party in terms of remediation. SEPA will continue to work constructively and co-operatively with DIO, but as the regulator SEPA has a specific role under the Radioactive Contaminated Land Regulations (RCL) to assess the fitness of the proposals of the responsible party for the protection of the environment and human health."

"SEPA will continue with the necessary preparations for designation of the area as RCL in the event that it does not receive a credible long-term voluntary remediation plan from DIO. We expect to see a draft of the remediation plan by the end on January 2012, and to have the final version by the end of February.

"If this does not happen, SEPA intends to designate the area as RCL by the end of March 2012."

If a credible long term voluntary remediation plan is in place by the end of February 2012, designation would no longer be required.

SEPA also announced that it will be establishing a group of independent experts in radioactivity to help provide advice and guidance on the contamination at Dalgety Bay. Further details on this group will be provided in the near future.

Ends

Notes to editors

• The high activity sources were detected in the restricted access area of the beach during a previous round of monitoring. SEPA had requested that DIO remove the particles and they had offered to assist but were unable to make suitable transport arrangements for any sources recovered. SEPA therefore took the decision to recover the potential hazard as quickly as practicable and deployed a contractor to investigate and recover the source.
  
• The Radioactive Contaminated Land (Scotland) Regulations 2007 come into force at the end of October 2007. SEPA has the responsibility under these regulations for the investigation, identification, characterisation and regulation of remediation of radioactive contaminated land (RCL). Without designation, we rely on voluntary remediation by relevant parties.