EXCLUSIVE by David Wiles

The company behind a proposed landfill near Tadcaster could profit if waste from it were to pollute the local breweries' water supply, the Evening Press can reveal today.

Yorkshire Water - to which the breweries would turn for water if the aquifer became polluted - owns a 46 per cent stake in Waste Recycling Group, of which Darrington Quarries Ltd, which wants to create the landfill, is a part.

There is no suggestion that the company would abuse its position, but the news has raised fears of a potential conflict of interest.

Any leakage from the landfill would force John Smith's, Samuel Smith's and Bass Breweries to turn to Yorkshire Water for hundreds of millions of litres of water each year.

Darrington Quarries Ltd has applied for permission to fill the Jackdaw Crag Quarry in Stutton with 4.7 million tonnes of industrial, commercial and domestic waste over the next 25 years.

The breweries fear leakage from the landfill could pollute the underground aquifer from which they get their pure water.

A leak into the breweries' water supply could mean a massive increase in sales each year for Yorkshire Water.

John Grogan, MP for Selby, said he was concerned by the apparent conflict of interests. "This important new information revealed by the Evening Press puts another questionmark against the planning application for the landfill site," he said.

"Whilst not questioning the integrity of Yorkshire Water, it is certainly an additional complication."

A spokesman for Yorkshire Water said they did have a 46 per cent stake in Waste Recycling Group, but dismissed suggestions of a conflict of interest.

"We don't see there's a conflict of interest because there is no threat to the water supply," he said. "Both Yorkshire Water and Waste Recycling Group have exceedingly high operational standards."

Dan Unwin, general manager of Bass Breweries, said their Tadcaster brewery produced about a million barrels of beer each year.

"The average brewery uses between four and seven barrels of water to produce each barrel of beer, so a brewery of this size could be using as much as 1,000 million litres of water each year, more than 95 per cent of which comes from the aquifer," he said.

John Smith's Tadcaster operation produces 400 million pints of beer each year.

A spokeswoman for John Smith's parent company, Scottish Courage, said they were very concerned about the quality of their water and the threat to it from the landfill, and that in the event of leakage, they would turn to Yorkshire Water for brewing.

Samuel Smith's brewery said it would also turn to Yorkshire Water if it could not use the aquifer.

Mike Snell, spokesman for Waste Recycling Group, said the allegations assumed that there would be pollution

"We do not accept that. We have engaged environmental consultants to look at the effects on groundwater and have carried out detailed risk assessments," he said.

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