https://www.private-eye.co.uk/in-the-back
Green Eye , Issue 1685
seahorse.jpg THE Wellcome Trust was set up to improve the health of humans, animals and the environment and is now the UK’s richest charity, with £35.7bn assets. Among its highly varied portfolio of investments is Brighton Marina, owned by its subsidiary, Premier Marinas.

While the megabucks charity looks to address green issues, Brighton Marina management is locked in a lengthy dispute about the dumping of potentially toxic sludge dredged from along the protected coast. And the Wellcome Trust is refusing to engage with conservationists who have asked it to step in.

Berth tourism
Brighton Marina, a lively tourist attraction and housing development with around 1,600 berths for houseboats, working fishing craft and 70-metre superyachts, has an issue with silting which can block access to the open sea.

For decades, it dredged the slimy gloop and dumped it a couple of miles along the coast on the shoreline at Rottingdean, a unique intertidal chalk reef, home to snout- nosed seahorses (pictured), native oysters and blue mussel beds. Oyster catchers, seals and dolphins are among its visitors.

The area was designated a conservation zone in 2013. Last year campaigners, who say the biodiverse ecosystem is being suffocated by the stinky silt, won a legal battle to protect it from further dumping, backed by 6,000 supporters.

The Marine Management Organisation conceded ahead of a judicial review that it had been wrong to grant a 10-year licence renewal allowing 100,000 tonnes to be deposited there every year without considering the environmental impact.

Now the marina is looking to resume dredging and has applied to lift the Rottingdean ban temporarily while it seeks a more permanent solution. The most likely site is a few miles east in Newhaven, where there’s a break in the Beachy Head West Marine Conservation Zone at the mouth of the River Ouse.

Toxic debate
Premier Marinas insists the sediment is “tested and subject to strict licensing controls”. Campaign group Surfers Against Sewage claims the company’s testing is not robust enough, and that instead of looking at the potential toxic impact of the combination of chemicals, it examines substances individually against safe levels. It says water quality is also affected for people using the sea for swimming and watersports.

Sussex Wildlife Trust (SWT) objects to disposal at the “sensitive, protected area” and warns that analysis of sediment provided in the application shows the presence of trace metals, PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons) and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) “which are banned and require hazardous waste disposal”. It wants the marina to apply for permission to take the sediment out to sea, away from protected sites, where it says currents would disperse it more safely.

Cool Wellcome
SWT marine conservation officer Sarah Ward said: “We accept it would be a more complicated and costly process but, as it stands, nature is paying the price. We have tried to speak to Wellcome Trust directly, but that conversation never happened. It said it trusted the marina group.

“The charity has environmental sustainability as one of its core missions, but those values are not coming through its financial and business interests here. It seems a strange model.”

She said Newhaven might be the “least worst” option on the table, and that campaigners are awaiting the outcome of a marina-commissioned modelling report which will show whether dumped sediment would be carried to the conservation zone. “But it would be better to see Wellcome actually investing in the ecology here instead of prioritising the financial investment in its marina.”