How much?

[Silas Gull]

A fighter jet crashes in a farmer's field. As one would expect, the cost to replace the plane is pretty eye-watering, but not as staggering as the clean up bill.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-31459574
How can this be? Did they replace the entire field? To a depth of 5 metres?
Someone must have had a nice little tickle out of this one!

 

[dc_ni]

excavation/removal of contaminated soil: £52,296 ($80,513)
transfer of contaminated soil to landfill: £284,921 ($438,651)
reinstatement of topsoil: £55,373 ($85,250)
labour and equipment costs: £644 ($991)

Transfer of contaminated soil to landfill: £284,921 :shock: :shock:

 

[Alexam]

I think they actually dug a big ditch at the side of the field and used that content as the top soil and buried the old stuff. :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[porker]

Glad other people thought this too. How on earth can they justify this cost? I once worked for the MOD and nothing surprises me. Where I worked they built a plating shop IIRC cost them around £3M (back in the late 80's) - it was never used.

 

[undergroundhunter]

Why are the MOD paying 25% of the cost??

Matt

 

[Phil Pascoe]

My grandfather worked at an MOD establishment where they built a new stores building about the size of a couple of bungalows. It was granite built, had a Delabole slate roof, mahogany double glazing (this was '60's :shock: ) and oak doors. Eighteen months later they burned it down for firefighting practice.

 

[finneyb]

There is an £80/tonne landfill tax on each tonne of the contaminated topsoil that is run to tip, in addition to the transport charges to get it to tip and the actual tip fees. So the charge per tonne could easily be £100 if not greater depending on the distance to tip ie £ 2000 per 20 tonne wagon. https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ndfill-tax

A tonne of topsoil is not very much in volume terms, typically @ 1.4 tonnes/cubic metre density - 1 tonne equates to a strip 1m wide x 2.4 m long x 0.3 m deep.

£284000 @ £100/tonne = 2840 tonnes.
2840 tonnes @ 0.3m deep (= 2840 x 2.4 sq m ) = 6816 sq m Therefore the area of contamination is a circle about 46m radius.

Without any knowledge of plane crashes the area seems reasonable to me, esp as fuel will spread with the impact and it ALL needs to be removed otherwise the farmer will suffer a future loss from his future crops and that is simply not going to be allowed to happen by the farmer and NFU who will be supervising the work very closely.

Household refuse that is tipped also incurs the £80/tonne tax and that is why its important for Local Authorities to recycle as much as possible to reduce the tax take of tipping household refuse - a tax take that comes directly out of your community charge/rates .

Brian

 

[themackay]

Someone made a killing there.

 

[marcros]

I wonder whether the 25% was because the majority of the money would be landfill tax.

 

[flying haggis]

Why are the MOD paying 25% of the cost??

Matt

My thoughts exactly.

 

[finneyb]

Why are the MOD paying 25% of the cost??

Matt

My thoughts exactly.

You may find that MOD pays 25% of the running costs of having USAF in UK - as the UK's contribution to defence against Russia. There is a USAF manned Early Warning system around Harrogate - USAF will want a contribution as we benefit. But normally the contribution doesn't show as money because it is a benefit in kind ie exisiting RAF accommodation and infrastructure.

Just my 2p worth

Brian