From the pre-Egger days of the Hexham chipboard factory there have been environmental issues and attempts to solve them. In the 1970s a rain shower would almost always deposit a fine layer of dust and wood fibre washed out of the air from the emissions of the chipboard factory. There were problematic discharges into the River Tyne which is adjacent to the factory and the aerial emissions from the factory would often take on unnatural purple, brown or blue hues. There were unpleasant smells. Residents in parts of Hexham were afflicted by noise from the plant.
After Egger took over the plant some of these problems were gradually alleviated, but others remained. Construction of the Campact plant to manufacture formaldehyde caused particular public concern. A citizens’ protest body, Tynedale Environmental Group, was formed and campaigned with some success locally and nationally to have reasonable emissions standards made legally binding.
The Local Council saw Egger’s proposal in 2005 to substantially rebuild the plant as an opportunity to deal with all the environmental issues from scratch in the light of previous experience. The new plant which opened in summer 2007 duly improved control of air and dust emissions. Some noisy processes were successfully enclosed.
But the visual impact of the industrial buildings in a rural landscape is enormous, not only in appearance, but also in scale. The factory is unavoidably visible from most of the approaches to the market town and its plume can be seen from places many miles away, including the Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage Site. Throughout the night the plant was brightly illuminated. Many residents had failed to understand the enormous impact of the enlarged factory until it was built.
The new plant also brought a raft of new noise problems exacerbated by the 24-hour operation of the plant. Some vibrations were so severe that house windows up to 1 kilometre away constantly rattled. There were all kinds of bangs, crashes, squeals and whines, not to mention constant vehicle reversing alarms, at all hours of the day and night. The problems most affected the small villages of Anick and Oakwood at the top of an escarpment to the North East of the factory, for whom the expansion of the factory had meant that it moved half a kilometre nearer – and in particular the noisiest processes had moved from the furthest to the nearest side of the plant. The factory clearly failed the carefully crafted statutory noise emissions limits which it was required to meet. Affected residents were incandescent and began a campaign for remedial work.
The Council Health Protection Department set to work with Egger to address all these problems. Over the first year and one by one, with much trial and error – and effort – many sources of noise were silenced. It turned out that the night-time exterior lighting could after all be reduced by two-thirds without infringing health and safety requirements (while saving Egger money). Egger were persuaded by Parish Councillors for the Parish of Sandhoe, in which the Egger factory is located, to provide £16,000 to pay for the planting of a shelter belt of trees part way up the escarpment, voluntarily supplementing the tree planting immediately around the factory which had been required by the Planning Authority as a condition of approval. Debris on approach roads left by lorries leaving the factory unladen was resolved by a strict process of cleaning and inspection of lorries before they can leave the factory. But at October 2009 noise from log-loading and chipping remains a serious problem for residents.
The Local Council has been involved with much more environmental compliance work as a result of non-compliance with clearly stated planning and environmental conditions. The use of conditions and regulations is explored here: http://www.eggerwatch.com/?page_id=236