A new dust management plan has been set up by Clydeport who were rapped this week by a leading environmental body in relation to coal dust issues.

There were given a ‘poor’ compliance record by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency in review of 2013, despite getting ‘good’ in 2012, and ‘excellent’ in 2010/11.

In their official comment. SEPA stated: “Some discussion had taken place between Clydeport and ourselves with regard to improvement work on the jetty area during the summer shut down.

“The incident that occurred on 23 April 2013 confirmed that some improvements were required. In order to ensure the work was completed on time SEPA issued an enforcement notice on Clydeport detailing what work should be done and specified a timescale.

“Clydeport complied fully with the notice. One of the improvement measures was to install a new dust suppression system at the upper hopper area on both unloading cranes at the jetty. During the “fine tuning” of this new system another significant incident occurred on 31 August 2013 which resulted in further deposition of particulate matter on the same area of Fairlie as that of the incident in April.

“The malfunction of the system that led to this second incident has now been fixed. Clydeport have also produced a dust mangement plan for the terminal to identify and manage those parts of site operations that are at most risk of particulate matter being generated and being carried off beyond the site boundary.” Clydeport accepted that there had been two “isolated incidents” at Hunterston, but said that it had ploughed in tens of thousands of pounds to minimise dust clouds. Residents dispute that the incidents are isolated though, with regular reports of dust on cars, and house windows, and the company were criticised by Conservative councillor Tom Marshall for not satisfactorily dealing with the problem.

Following intervention by Cunninghame North MSP Kenneth Gibson, a new community liaison group has been set up in Fairlie which has been productive, according to CC member Steve Graham.

In August 2014, there were further coal dust problems for the company as essentials works were carried out by an external contractor to repaint the underside of the causeway which involved shotblasting, leading to reports of a ‘mushroom cloud’ coming from the port.

Clydeport responded by stating that they were installing additional screening, to retain as much of the residual materials as possible on site.