Environmental Impact
When built, the power stations were fitted with electrostatic precipitators, to reduce the amount of smoke and dust emitted from the stations' chimneys. At the time, this was the most up-to-date method to prevent pollution from power stations.
Despite these precautions, pollution from the power stations was still a factor. In 1954, consideration was given to scrapping the plan to build the Union Hall housing estate in Lemington because of probable pollution from nearby power stations. This was mainly because some of the houses were as high as, if not higher than, the power stations' chimneys. At times, this meant the estate being exposed to as much as 1.25 parts per million of sulphur dioxide. However the estate was still built, as these peak conditions were thought unlikely to occur on more than 18 days in a year.
Smoke was not the only thing emitted from the power station. In July 1956, the discharge of cooling water from the stations was noted to have increased the water temperature of the river by 1.5 °C between Ryton and Scotswood. However, this was found to not be too deleterious, as it did not seem to affect the passage of migratory fish. In fact, because of the stations' introduction of warm water into the river, basking sharks were known to be attracted to the area.
From the start, the power stations' fly ash was dumped in the North Sea, and 800,000 tonnes of fly ash were dumped between the Stella and Blyth stations in 1976. By 1991, National Power's licence had been restricted to dumping only 50,000 tonnes of ash a year from the Stella power stations. By this point the North East coast was the only place in Europe to dump fly ash at sea. Fly ash dumping had been found to make sea bed inert, with much life being smothered and killed by the fly ash. It was also found to create problems for the fishing industry, when their trawlers caught large lumps of it. The licence for Stella was terminated in May 1991, with the stations' closure. Blyth power stations' licence was terminated by the end of 1992, ending fly ash dumping in the North Sea.
Read more about this topic: Stella Power Stations
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