North East File Collection - NEFC

Developments are necessary to provide homes, facilities and jobs for us and so are to be welcomed. The companies involved make sure that developments deliver what they should for owners, buyers and customers. The various different regulators make sure that our commons are protected. They can only do their job if they know what going on. So if you feel something is wrong with a development or spot something that isn't being done as it should be or an incident - environmental, nature, safety, pollution, then report it. If you spot a company or a public department going above and beyond to help the environment, then tell your local media, post on social media and tell your representatives that this is how it should be done.

Development and Environment

This site was developed to bring together information around the die-offs in the marine environment around the River Tees.

It turned out the River Tees is not necessarily unique, as many of the challenges to the environment that are experienced on the River Tees happen at other places around the UK and even around the world.

In order to understand what the challenges to the environment are and how they occur it has been necessary to understand how a port like the River Tees work, how the navigation channels are maintained (River Tees - Maintenance Dredging), how material is disposed of at sea, what marine licenses are necessary.

However, the challenges come not just from the activities on the river, but also from the development alongside the river (An analysis of the crab die off and the environmental risks of Teesworks). So it is also necessary to understand the planning process and specifically all about ground contamination.

The Lower Tees and Its Coast - The Risks that Industry, Dredging and Development Pose to Crabs & Seals

A talk by Dr Simon Gibbon to Climate Action Stokesley and Villages monthly meeting on 18th February 2025.

Simon Gibbon started looking at the Tees after the mass crab die-off in autumn 2021, as a retired industrial chemist he has had to learn about how the river works in all senses (industry/nature) in order to be able to start to understand the challenges which the environment and industry face. From an environmental viewpoint his talk will tell us about what goes on in the lower Tees and along its banks, talk about recent studies into the high seal mortality and explain why perhaps the official explanation of the crab die-off needs further investigation.The river Tees as an industrial / post-industrial river is not unique to the UK, Europe and even globally, so these parallels will be highlighted as well.

Presentation Slides plus Extras with links to supporting information

Draft Articles

Topics

Autumn 2021 Crab Die-off

River Tees Die-off Chronology

Dredging

Teesworks

North East Marine Research Group

An analysis of the crab die off and the environmental risks of Teesworks

Reclaim our Sea Facebook Group

North East Fishing Collective Facebook Group

Mystery of the Teesside Crab Deaths: Algal bloom or preventable cover up? - Webinar November 30 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm - Details

How to report

Petition to Pause Dredging

The Developments

Teesworks - South Tees Site - Freeport

Teesworks - South Tees Planning Applications

Teesworks - Timeline of groundworks including prior to October 2021

Teesside Infrastructure Planning Inspectorate

N.B. many documents are large either due to the amount of information within or because they have been produced for publicity containing high resolution photography.

The Environment

Mass Marine Mortality Events - Summary

1999 - Tees Estuary Present & Future - Environment Agency Report

Environmental Sampling

DEFRA Reports

Chronology of Marine Die-offs

Pollution across the UK and within the River Tees

Contaminants

Dredging the Tees

The North East File Collection

This website is designed to provide open access to information around major developments happening in the North of England, so that people are able to engage with what is happening in our neighbourhood, to our environment and often with our money.

The site is not designed to be pretty, but to make the information accessible in a form it is not currently, as such the site will soon provide Google search access, which is not possible on the original sites as the documents are held within a variety of document management systems. In order to aid accessibility in some cases hyperlinks between documents or to other content has been inserted - if you have any problems then please refer to original source to check issues.

Please respect the copyright of all documents on this site, this site can take no responsibility for any use outside that legally required of the copyright holder to allow public oversight of major developments. Please refer to the original site for definitive and potentially updated versions.

Please email simonrg@northeastfc.uk if you spot any areas where newer documents are now available.

The documents should only be used for your oversight of the developments which they document and for which they were originally made available.

Why Does This Matter To You

Find the facts so you can ask the right questions to be able to answer the questions that matter and campaign to enhance our world:

28th November 2022 Channel 4 - Are Marine Life Deaths Linked to Pollution Caused by River Tees Dredging?

30th September 2022 Channel 4 - What's killing marine life in the North East of England?

27th July 2023 - Mass Marine Die-offs: Searching for the Cause of These Events in Northeast England - Dr Gary Caldwell

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