Veolia - a silent and deadly neighbour?

Today, Safe Waste in Shropshire members visited Chineham near Basingstoke. Chineham has the same kind of incinerator as is planned for Shrewsbury and which Veolia hopes will burn Shropshire's waste.

The residents we met described the incinerator as their 'silent and deadly neighbour'. Pictured here is the Chineham incinerator. The sheer size and ugliness of this plant in a rural setting is a real shock. Imagine what it might look like at the Battlefield site proposed for it.

The Chineham residents told us about the processes which had led up to their losing the battle against the incinerator. The 'done deal', the manipulated 'consultation', the railroading of the planning process and the assumption of compliance among both residents and elected representatives has left a legacy of bitterness and cynicism in an area of the country not noted for dissent.

It is time for Shropshire people to wake up and realise what is being done under their noses before it is too late and we, like the people of Chineham, find ourselves with a 'silent and deadly' neighbour.

Here is a reminder of the sort of company we are dealing with. Veolia is a global, multi-billion dollar mega-corporation which has not grown so rich on caring about people's health or well-being. They have many incarnations, of which Veolia ES Shropshire is just one of the latest. Look at one of their American cousins and what they are getting up to in Texas, USA:

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/dayton_vx/dayton_vx.html

The Army's deadly VX waste is burning in Port Arthur Smokestacks at Veolia Incinerator Facility near Port Arthur, Texas. PORT ARTHUR, TX -- "Once again an impoverished Texas neighborhood, in this case in the town of Port Arthur, has become the disposal point for hazardous waste, only this time the waste is potentially so lethal that a drop the size of a pinhead can kill. A chemical-weapons facility in Indiana is destroying obsolete weapons containing VX nerve agent, producing caustic wastewater that the Army is shipping to Veolia Environmental Services for incineration. The Army has claimed the waste is no more dangerous than kitchen cleaners. But when environmental scientists began looking at the disposal process, they found scary scenarios. The 'neutralized' waste still contains some VX, and the incinerators might not destroy all of it. There are no monitors on the incinerator smokestacks to sound the alert if it isn’t eliminated. And VX components in the water could reconstitute in shipping tanks under certain conditions, endangering lives along the transportation route," Rusty Middleton, The Texas Observer.

AN INCINERATOR IN THEIR BACK-YARD

Alternative trip to Veolia’s 'flagship' incinerator

Safe Waste in Shropshire has organised a ‘fact-finding mission’ to meet residents in Chineham - home of Veolia's 'flagship' incinerator and to hear directly from them what life is really like with a Veolia incinerator towering over your neighbourhood.

Veolia Environmental Services, who will be applying to SCC at the end of 2008 for permission to build a 90,000 ton incinerator at Battlefield, Shrewsbury, has been taking elected representatives, journalists and residents on tours of the ‘flagship’ Chineham incinerator since 2007 as it is the same size as the one projected for Shrewsbury. There, they are given a tour of the incinerator, a free lunch and plenty of soft-soap about how clean the incinerator is. No mention is ever made of how small particulates are not monitored or the embarrassing leaks in 2003 when black smoke poured out of the chimney. Neither are visitors ever introduced to any local people. Our regular readers will remember Veolia's embarrassing over-reaction when we published a picture of the smoke issuing from the incinerator chimney on this site i.e. they accused us of lying when of course what we had reported was genuine!

The new breed of incinerators, branded 'Energy Recovery Facilities' (referring to the fact that they function as expensive power stations) are claimed to be much cleaner. They are not supposed to emit black smoke anymore. Incinerator salesmen never mention that the invisible, unmonitored, tiny particulates - PM1s and PM2.5s - are the ones that cause real health damage. What looks 'clean' can actually be deadly and the UK government at the moment is doing nothing to change this situation.

When Chris Tomblin, the Chair of Chineham Parish Council, told Safe Waste in Shropshire, ‘Having had one of the "first" new plants we can share a lot of the truth of living with one and it is also frustrating when people tour the Chineham plant and we, the local community, are never invited to meet and give our views’, the group decided that they would give Chineham residents the hearing Veolia denies them. The visit will be fully documented with photographs and recordings and we will share our findings when we get back!

Read more at:

http://safewasteshrewsbury.blogspot.com/2008/03/veolia-seeks-information.html

http://www.netpark-ltd.co.uk/bbac/Incidents.shtml#BBAC-Systems-crash-at-Chineham-Burner-causes-concern

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/1895&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

ENERGY FROM WASTE NOT AS GREEN AS IT'S PAINTED

Waste-to-energy not climate friendly, research shows

Source URL: http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=11395

Mountains of rubbish: the Government is currently reviewing the UK's long-term waste strategy Waste companies' claims that incineration produces green energy are false, new research has found. Getting energy from burning waste in incinerators produces 33% more greenhouse gases than burning coal in power stations, according to research published by Friends of the Earth on Wednesday. Despite this, waste companies and Government alike promote it as a "green" way of dealing with rubbish.

FOE's waste campaigner Dr Michael Warhurst said: "The Government and waste industry must stop peddling the myth that waste incineration is green energy. Incinerators can generate electricity, but they produce more climate emissions than a gas-fired power station." The environmental group released the report entitled A changing climate for energy from waste as the consultation period on the Government's long-term waste strategy (see related story) comes to a close. While the strategy aims is to "reduce the impact of waste on climate change," it proposes an increase in the proportion of waste incinerated from 9% to around 27% by 2020. As we get better at recycling and the proportion of burned plastics decreases, fossil fuel-derived CO2 released from burning waste is likely to fall. But the report estimates that by 2020 incinerators will still be almost as polluting in CO2 terms as new coal-fired power stations, and 78% worse than gas-fired ones, taking changes to technology and recycling into account. "The Government must make it clear that they will not support the building of such polluting plants. Using these incinerators to produce energy will undermine Government attempts to tackle climate change. Ministers must back truly renewable energy sources instead," said Dr. Warhurst.

The report says the Government should invest in greener waste-to-energy methods instead, such as anaerobic digestion, a process by which methane is produced from kitchen and commercial food waste, and burnt as fuel to produce energy. The full report commissioned by FOE from Eunomia Consulting can be accessed here.