Following a successful court case instigated by Hillingdon resident Sarah Green, HS2 must release their unredacted risk assessments for work taking place in the drinking water protected areas of the Colne Valley, by 21st May 2021.
This news is a setback for HS2 who seek to build a viaduct on the land near to Newyears Green, an area known to be a source of underground water-bourn pollution.
It is a victory campaigners who emphasise the viaduct puts at risk the drinking water of 3.2 million Londoners, including Hillingdon residents.
HS2 had argued that releasing the risk assessments would not be in the public interest and could risk public safety. Further, they said they needed ‘safe space’ to undertake further investigations and discussions with third parties and releasing the information could cause the public to get false impressions.
The judges rejected these reasons saying that the stance HS2 Ltd took almost entirely negates the possibility of the public having any input on the decision-making process in this kind of case, which goes against a large part of the reason for allowing public access to environmental information.
Of the tribunal judgement, Sarah Green said:
“I look forward to the full release of the documents; Options for mitigation of effects of piling on groundwater, Groundwater Assessment for Construction Tasks – Piling at the Colne Valley Viaduct and Groundwater Assessment for Construction Tasks – Tunnel and Cross passage. This is an important court decision which upholds the public’s right to environmental information regarding our water supplies and a right to take part in the decision making process".
Well done Sarah for taking on big brother and winning. It seems that when it comes to public safety and health HS2 is happy to keep us all in the dark. The question I ask is what else have they not told us as I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg. Dependent upon what is contained in the information when it is released there could be grounds for a full blown public enquiry into HS2’s behaviour at which the judgement of it’s executives should be challenged as the protection of the general public should be non negotiable. In those circumstances I would hope that there would be an associated Parliamentary enquiry during which all work on HS2…