Teesside Freeport: Dredging likely to take place this year

The issue has been in the spot light recently following the large-scale death of crabs and lobsters in the North Sea around Teesside.

Some local analysts and fishermen believe the prevalence of the chemical Pyridine – a waste produce of heavy industry - in the dead crustaceans is a direct consequence of dredging the Tees riverbed.

But this has been ruled out by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which released its findings of its investigation into the issue last week. It says an algal bloom is the most likely cause.

Read more: DEFRA report gives update on sea life deaths in North East

Read more: Read DEFRA's report into crab and lobster deaths along coast 

Last month, protestors calling for no further dredging of the river took to the water to make their views known. 

So far, there has been no dredging done on behalf of the Teesside Freeport, Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen said.

The last time the river was dredged was last September, when work was done by “The Orca” – a 79-metre dredger weighing more than 3,000 tonnes - on behalf of PD Ports at the mouth of the river.

However, as part of the construction of the South Bank quay for the freeport, dredging will need to take place.

It is not yet scheduled, but is likely to take place towards the end of the year.

A protest was held by fishermen near South Gare last month Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT

He said:  “When we are building our quay at some point we will have to do some dredging. We have been working with the Environment Agency and MMO (Marine Management Organisation) to get the right licences in place and go through step by step to see what will happen in the river and how it will be dredged.

“The MMO and the EA worked at this closely and they had asked us if we would agree to do more sampling of the dredging that we will be doing and we did agree to do that.  That sampling has come back. That's all been cleared by the EA and the MMO.”

He added about 100,000 tonnes of soil had been identified though sampling that cannot be disposed of at sea but will be decontaminated and all of the contaminated on land, and then take it away, and obviously, not put into the river.

He added: “Let's be clear. There's no evidence that Dredging is the cause of that and all of the reports and all the investigations that have taken place, actually pretty categorically, say that it isn't dredging.

“I appreciate some people think that it is but at the moment we've not seen any evidence to the contrary.”

He said due to “genuine concerns” he had written to the government to ensure the EA and MMO works with river users to maintain continuous monitoring of water samples.

He said: “That’s to make sure that if there are any changes,  or any alternatives that are identified as to what could cause other environmental impacts that we have, we can have an immediate responsive rather than that happening and then having to find out afterwards, what caused it and when it was caused etc.

So we have we have asked for more continuous monitoring of the river into the stop again, in the future.  Or anything else, actually because to be honest, there is a lot of stuff that goes into this river and high levels of monitoring is not necessarily a bad thing.”

Defra ruled out dredging as a likely cause of crustacean deaths. It said nothing in the testing g of sediment prior to disposal or evidence from Environment Agency sampling suggests a chemical contaminant is a cause and added sediment which is proposed to be dredged is tested at least every three years prior to disposal.

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