Peel Harbour faces a significant problem after planning refusals left dredged silt with no approved disposal site, and the marina requires dredging again very shortly, a Tynwald committee has heard.
Silt removed from the harbour five or six years ago is currently stored by the power station, waiting to go to the former Cross Vein mine site.
DoI Minister Tim Crookall admitted: “We’re in a very tight spot at the moment. Yeah, we really are.”
“Obviously, that planning application didn’t go through. So there’s an appeal going through on that,” he said.
A separate planning permission to leave the material until the end of 2027 is also being appealed by Peel Commissioners. “If they win that, then we’ve got a huge problem,” Mr Crookall said.
Jeff Robinson, Deputy Chief Officer, said the long-term strategy involved working with DEFA to stop pollution entering the watercourse from old mines and to extract heavy metals.
“Over the long period, we actually stop the silt build-up in the harbour, in the marina, being of a problematic type, and then we can go back to more of a traditional dredging and letting it go out to sea,” he said. Currently, that is not permitted.