It may be no great surprise that so many volunteers stepped up to tackle the environmental crisis resulting from tonnes of plastic nurdles being released into the Tyne, given the real sense of community in our area.
The problem arose when the Wind Orca crashed into the BG Orange, spilling part of the cargo into the water and bringing a crane crashing down. My thoughts are with the injured crane operator. The Port of Tyne reported the crisis, brought in one of the top companies to start the clean up and alerted the wider coastal community to the possible impact. Councils across the region ratcheted up their response, including working with local volunteers. The Local Resilience Forum met to coordinate the response bringing together councils and government agencies including the Environment Agency, the Marine Maritime Organisations well as government scientists.
There will be time to look at how effective and timely that response was but the primary concern is getting as many of the nurdles out of the environment as possible.
The response was regional, central government stands ready to help but as the councils, port and agencies get on with the job an important principle must prevail – that the polluter pays.
I spoke to ministers to make sure every effort was made to tackle the crisis, that the current rules for moving nurdles is fit for purpose and in future there is greater clarity about who is in charge. Partnership working is important but swift action demands clear responsibility. However testing the crisis has been it’s important that lessons are learned.