00:00I came across the story of a man called Douglas Gowan, who had spent his life, it seemed, having, first
00:06of all, in the mid-60s, as a younger man working for the National Union of Farmers, there had been
00:15a call from a farmer in the Groswein area, Neil Chantrisent, a farmer who had seen strange things happening to
00:24his livestock, aborted fetuses, malformed fetuses, dead.
00:31Crayfish and such in the streams, and wanted someone to come and investigate. Douglas Gowan went out to investigate. He
00:39then discovered that there was a quarry nearby, brofisking quarry, disused quarry, that was being used for dumping from the
00:48Monsanto factory in Newport, dumping what turned out to be canisters of something called PCB, polychlorinated biphenyls.
00:57And Douglas spent many, many years after that testing, finding out what PCBs were, and slowly piecing together a story
01:07that seemed to indicate that the dumping of these PCBs in brofisking quarry was leading to it leeching out.
01:15I got in touch with the First Minister before the documentary went out, and I invited him and whoever he
01:23would like to bring forward to watch the documentary before it went out publicly, because I feel like this is
01:28not about trying to point blame at anyone, and I thought it was a very good opportunity for the First
01:33Minister, as a new First Minister incoming, to be able to get on board with this, to look for solutions.
01:38This is not everything. I've always said that everything we're doing with this is not about just shouting about it.
01:44It's about looking for a practical way forward, a practical solution.
01:47And so I invited the First Minister to have an opportunity to look at it, talk to us about it.
01:52Unfortunately, that offer was not taken up.
01:56And subsequently, I personally haven't been contacted by anyone that you've mentioned. Has anyone got in touch with you?
02:03No, no, we we had right of replies from DEFRA, but they were mostly towards our concerns, I think. And
02:10obviously, anyone we made allegations against would get replies. But I think this issue has been met with either indifference
02:16or a kind of, you know, I guess, they don't know what to do, or they don't want to engage
02:21from pretty much across the political spectrum.
02:23What's kind of surprising is that, you know, chemical contamination and toxins in our communities is, I don't think, a
02:29politically divisive issue at the moment. It's not something like climate change, where you're seeing divisions in parties.
02:36So it's stunning to me that the other things we've had so much response from the public, and so many
02:40people have said the angriest moment for them was reading the end slates, the responses. That's what made everyone's blood
02:47boil.
02:47And just one other thing. When you say that there's a sort of an expectation for the taxpayer to take
02:53this up, I would disagree. No, my expectation is that the people who are responsible for this originally should pay
02:59for it.
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