I NOTE in a recent edition that Wychavon District Council are spending up to £50,000 on consultants to look at the future use of the old sewage works site now known as Abbey Road Depot.

To save a little time and considerable expenditure, now and in the future, the council should consider the following facts: The site contains the old Evesham and District butchers abattoir where, for a long period of time, animal intestines were deposited, with other extraneous matter on the site to raise the area above flood level.

The main sewers of Evesham gravitate to this site from all parts of the town, prior to pumping to the sewage works the other side of Clarks Hill. The smell from the pumping station can be a nuisance, and the cost of re-aligning or constructing buildings over these sewers could be very expensive.

The site also housed the Evesham Borough Mortuary and, over the years, post mortems were carried out in a building with very little drainage facilities.

For many years the site has been used as a dumping ground of many items including certain noxious material picked up by road cleansing vehicles and dumped on the site.

Over recent years, refuse vehicles have been cleansed and maintained on the site, thus causing considerable pollution to the overall subsoil.

Over the years various suggestions have been made; to build a hotel as part of the Riverside Improvement Scheme, to relocate small industry to the site; to provide a site for Evesham United Football Club, a road transport depot, and a new hospital site.

The site has also been recommended as a temporary base for the Abbey and Merstow Green Surgeries; (a more suitable site for this would have been the temporary use of the car park at the rear of the old Post Office Building or the Express Dairies site off Little Abbey Lane). Abbey Road Depot is a brown-field site and any development in the area should have due regard to the various site levels, made up land and the inherent pollution contained within the soil, all of which could involve astronomic costs to any developer.

JAMES T POWELL, Environmental Health, Safety and Building Consultant, Abbotswood, Greenhill, Evesham.