Brunel University will be hosting a new audio and visual exhibition that examines the lives of communities including Southall which are impacted by contaminated soil will be from 17 March 2023 until 25 March 2023.
The free to visit Bridging Lives exhibition combines community led initiatives together with academic research that examines and explores the impact of soil on land that has been contaminated by historical and recent economic development.
To book free tickets, click here.
Southall along with Salford in Greater Manchester are the two communities that are explored.
It explores how the former Southall Gasworks is being developed into The Green Quarter by Berkeley Group and the impact of the historical contamination in the soil which residents have challenged the developer over.
Residents have complained of ill health, bad smells and other issues that they say impacts their lives on a daily basis.
Among those involved with the exhibition is local group Clean Air for Southall and Hayes (CASH) which has been campaigning since 2016 about the quality of air in their community and seeking to get both the local authority, Ealing Council as well government authorities to take action.
Neil Reynolds, chair of Ealing Greens told EALING.NEWS: “This exhibition is an excellent initiative to raise awareness about the lack of monitoring and action by both central and local government at the gasworks site. The disturbance of contaminated soil is one of the major causes of poor air quality in Southall. Residents deserve better.”
In 2020, The Guardian did a report on the site – Is my neighbourhood ‘poisoning’ me? Living in the shadow of a gasworks redevelopment
The Green Quarter, Southall, is an 88-acre brownfield site on the south bank of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal. Once the location of the Southall Gas Works, it is being redeveloped for mixed-used including 3,750 homes by Berkeley Homes. Remediation works to improve the soil condition have included an open-air soil hospital but residents living in and close to the site have highlighted over recent years that they suffer from poor air which impacts their lives.
