ABSTRACT
Looking directly across the river Mersey from Liverpool's Speke airport you see Ellesmere Port. In the north-west conurbation, Ellesmere Port is a microcosm of modem industrialized activity. It has been a place of commerce and industry for several centuries; the Manchester ship canal effectively begins at Ellesmere Port. On the southern bank of the canal is a horseshoe shaped site where the Redland Purle I Cleanaway waste disposal company have operated a high temperature incinerator since 1974.1 There is no incongruity about the Cleanaway operation. In an area of towering, smoking chimney stacks, giant heavy duty pipes and rusty railtracks, smoke, smells, dirty water and frothing canals are to the people who live and work in Ellesmere Port nothing out of the ordinary. Looking north and north-west from the M53 motorway which snakes out of Ellesmere Port past Calor Gas, Associated Octel and Cleanaway, dissecting the multi-tracked railway and the Shropshire Union canal, the vista is of heavy industry all the way to the junction with the M56 to Manchester. The massive ICI works at Runcorn dominates the skyline. Heavy industry on Merseyside is a way of life; pollution is a byproduct of existence. There is also a thin line between the pay cheque and the dole cheque.2
