The High Court has been asked to rule on a gas-pipeline company’s obligation to build toxic-waste barriers over a Warrington field.
Cheshire Brickmakers Ltd are suing Transco plc, along with fellow claimants Alan Gould and Sheenah Collier, who are trustees of the PJ Collier Childrens Settlement. The brickmakers and the trustees are both freehold owners of parcels of land on the west side of Moat Lane, Rixton, Warrington.
Extensive areas of the land are used to extract clay for brick making, and the areas in which the clay has been exhausted have been used by the claimants predecessors in title, and their licensees, for depositing waste. The court heard that an “appreciable” quantity of this waste was toxic and dangerous.
The claimants plan to continue to use the land for clay extraction, and to continue dumping waste as and when the areas of clay are used up.
In 1999 Transco launched plans to lay a gas pipeline between Mawdesley and Warrington, part of which was to pass along the west side of Moat Lane, within land owned by the claimants.
In order to obtain the easements to enable it to carry the work, Transco agreed to undertake investigative work and construction works, including the erection of an impervious barrier along the west side of Moat Lane.
The court is now being asked to decide the extent of the work necessary in order for Transco to comply with its obligations.
Gould and others v Transco plc Chancery Division (Anthony Mann QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the division) 3 July 2001.
PLS News 5/7/01
