Former golf club member Graham Warner said he remembered the 15th fairway being “pretty acrid” in the winter months, with a “chemical” odour that smelt “terrible”.
“You wouldn’t walk into it if your balls went into it,” he said.
Karen Mason’s husband David told the BBC he used to feel ill on parts of the course next to the brook, although he accepted he did not have conclusive proof linking his symptoms to the course.
“I started to feel as if I’d been drinking, but I’d not been drinking at all,” he said, while later in the clubhouse he said he would “be suffering with mild brain fog”.
Warner lives near the course and questioned whether some of the contamination might be spreading through underground brine runs.
He cited a 1973 Cheshire County Council report in which a geologist concluded liquid from the site “may travel large distances without very much dilution”.
He and other residents used this to claim plans for dozens of new houses near theirs, south of Houndings Lane in Malkins Bank, should not be built.
Developer Müller Property Group did not respond to requests for a comment.