I'm pretty certain that cash from the EU was earmarked to decontaminate the entire site.

When I was a lad I used to go to the tip and the wagon sank and then would spring back, as if the ground were foam rubber. Be a great cushion against earthquakes.

You may well be correct on that M@islebugs, though don't these EU grants usually come with an end date, after which they expire, if not used?

Jools, I'd guess the biggest difference between your company's experience and Odsal is the difference between the known knowns and the unknown knowns. Fair enough, if you know what's there, you are better able to make an assessment of what is 'safe' [or what you can get away with] and what isn't, but at Odsal, back in the day, it was pretty much uncontrolled, unregulated tipping and no-one has a clue what might come to the surface....or indeed, might be still slowly seeping into the ground water. I guess you may be more au fait with the system than I am but it all still seems a bit dodgy to me.

Think Dewsburys ground at Shaw Cross is built on an old tip.

As has been said already. It depends what’s in the tip. When Odsal was used as a tip there were no records kept of what was put in it and it was before a lot of H&S law so there could be all sorts of nasties in it. I remember that when they did the survey for the ill fated new stadium at Odsal in 2001/2 they turned up all sorts. The bottom line is they don’t want to disturb it too much as that could release all sorts. The plan then was to fill in the bowl and build on top. The land to the Coral Stand end has vents to allow gas to escape IIRC.

Not sure about the land Owl Lane is on but it may be that they have a record of what was dumped there.

In another life I worked on EU grants. The money that isn’t spent or is spent on the wrong thing can be clawed back by the Government. The Bulls have experience in this area as two members of my team had to get Abi Ekoku to sign a big cheque a few back to claw some money back, but this was unrelated to the stadium.

No idea what grants might have been claimed for clearing up the site. It won’t have been European Regional Development money though as there has to be signage up to say so and there’s been none.

My ex firm had been there over 100 years and no records of exactly what was done on site remained- although they did have a "waste pit" it was also known they they were dealing with types of chemicals since known to be carcinogen /mutagen. The developers got a bit of testing done. Then All they did was remove a bit of soil, line then put new uncontaminated soil on top. As long as certain substances are below certain levels in the samples they take you can develop. If they can build eating places where my old firm was they should be able to at least stick an industrial unit at odsal.