Alan Dalton, ex-Environment Agency board member, appointed by Michael Meacher as the consumers' representative at the highest levels of agency policy decision making, died recently after a fight with lymph cancer.
This man was the only person in that body to stand up and publicly state that he could see no examples of the agency protecting the people (you) from the activities of industrial incineration.
He was fired for the report that he sent to DEFRA, as it failed to toe the accepted line of "do nothing and keep quiet".
The outrage of dumping fly ash into our environment at Byker was one example of his investigative reports that made national news, yet failed to elicit a robust agency response and prosecution.
Alan was intimately involved with the issues of the cement industry burning tyres and hazardous waste in their kilns and was most concerned with your health of the operational validity of the plant at Westbury.
As co-founder of the Centre for Environmental Protection which The Air That We Breathe Group was instrumental in formulating, Alan had formed links with London University and was ready to help evaluate the data from Westbury.
His quarterly journal DIRT highlights the issues at Westbury for national consumption in the January edition.
It is a sad day for me personally, as people of integrity are a rare commodity, especially when large companies throw the financial bone to your pet project to buy your silence.
D R LEVY
Southcroft
Chapmanslade
Westbury
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