THE Government admitted this week that a giant pit near Petrockstowe, built to bury up to 400,000 foot and mouth carcasses but never used, is costing £20,000 per week simply to maintain.

West Devon and Torridge MP John Burnett is calling on the Government to rule out ever using the Ash Moor burial pit which he said posed a 'huge danger' to public health.

The MP said from answers to his parliamentary question to Animal Health Minister Elliot Morley it was obvious that water contamination over a vast area could not be avoided if the pit went operational.

Mr Morley revealed that the water table at the site was between 1.3 and 3.5 metres below ground level.

'I cannot imagine a more unsuitable site – with the water table this high it will flood and no amount of pumping would be able to get rid of the effluent.

'Gargantuan amounts of money have been spent on this pit but it is nothing compared with the cost to human health if this was ever used. I intend to use everything in my power to get the Government to abandon this preposterous idea.'

He said MAFF, now DEFRA, had failed to comply with the EU water directive and had made a decision without proper consultation with the local authority or the public.

'A site was chosen without doing an environmental impact study — it is being done now retrospectively but that does not comply with the law.'

Mr Morley said the environmental statement would be published after local consultation.

He added that if the site was brought into use the cost of odour control, long-term testing and monitoring was estimated at £400,000 a year. If the cells were all used there would also be a one-off cost of £1.5-million.

He confirmed that the cost of work to date stood at £5.6-million: 'The continuing cost of upkeep is £20,000 per week,' he said.

Member of the action group STAMP (Stop The Ash Moor Pit) Ron Dawson said it was impossible to trust what the Government was saying because the figures kept changing.

'I want to know what happened to the £2-million because the original figure for constructing this site was £7.5-million,' he said. 'The Ash Moor pit is flawed and dangerous so how can it still be considered as a viable option?'

Mr Dawson said STAMP currently had two complaints before the European Parliament concerning a breach of the ground water directive and the failure to carry out an environmental impact study.

'They are already pumping 180 tonnes of water per hour out of the pit and we have not even had the worst of the winter rainfall yet,' he said.

'A member of the Environment Agency stood up at a public meeting and told us it was a dry site but local people knew it was marshland — it appears now that they were reading the wrong map.'

The STAMP member said the pit was doing nothing for the tourist trade: 'To have this mass experimental operation, with all its threats to public health, going on right next to the Tarka Trail is hardly going to get people flocking here,' he said.