PLANNING APPLICATION FOR AN INCINERATOR AT BATTLEFIELD: MS2009/0125/SY. The public has until 30 April to submit comments on/objections to this application (see bottom of this post for more details).
INCINERATION – VEOLIA’S CLAIMS:
Shropshire residents currently produce ‘around’ 1.25 tons waste per year. Landfill is being used up and councils will now be fined if we don’t find a way to minimise it.
The incinerator will form part of a ‘sustainable package’ including composting, recycling and ‘energy recovery’ which will reduce landfill to 5% by 2015
The incinerator will produce 8mw of power, enough to power 10,000 homes. It will ‘help towards supplying greater energy security for the UK’
The ash produced by the 90,000-ton incinerator can be recycled as a construction material
The facility will complement and not compromise recycling and composting.
The incinerator ‘will generate enough electricity to power about 10,000 homes’
It will provide ‘a proven and safe means to handle rubbish from Shropshire that is not recycled or composted
To meet the targets set in line with the Government’s commitment to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover.
To create up to 180 jobs during the construction and 21 additional permanent jobs, once operational.
The incinerator is considered to be ‘carbon-neutral’ by climate-change experts.
The site is close to where most of Shropshire’s waste is generated, there are excellent road links and it is also adjacent to the Waste Transfer Station and Household Recycling Centre
The incinerator has an extensive gas cleaning process ensuring only gases which meet strict emission regulations are released to the atmosphere and these will be monitored.
The facility must also meet the EU’s strict criteria in the Waste Incineration Directive and Veolia must comply with the stringent emission controls which will be monitored by the Environment Agency for the life of the facility
The proposed incinerator can easily be modified to meet possible future more stringent emission standards.
The aim has been to focus on creating a high quality innovative design....that reflects the context of the industrial surroundings with the neighbouring rolling countryside and the viewpoint from the Battlefield Heritage Site.
In 2008, Veolia set up a ‘Community Liaison Group’ with a ‘wide cross-section of membership from the local area.’
Veolia says that it safely operates waste management services in 33 countries worldwide
INCINERATION – THE REALITY:
Waste figures: UK waste figures, including Shropshire’s, are falling rapidly. Shropshire is now at almost 60% recycling. Veolia is using inflated figures for household waste which show clearly that they will be relying on commercial and industrial waste in order to keep the incinerator burning.
Incinerators can generate 1 ton of toxic waste per 3 – 4 tons burned! This is not reducing waste to 5% but manipulating the figures to make incinerators look ‘green’. Yet, landfill figures can be reduced to 5% by reducing packing, recycling, deconstruction, re-use and composting. It’s called Zero Waste and they are doing this in many places, world-wide.
A combination of recycling and composting is 46 times better at reducing electricity greenhouse gases than ‘Energy from Waste’. But burning waste is highly profitable for the operator. So profitable that both Veolia and Sita want to build incinerators in Shrewsbury and Telford.
Sustainable: Mixed waste incinerators are inefficient, capturing only about 20% of energy generated by the waste. A huge amount of valuable resources and energy already used are lost. Recycling plastic, paper and metal saves many times more energy that is gained through incineration. Waste is not renewable and destroys resources that could be recovered or minimised. At the moment, Veolia has not even developed plans to collect and recycle most plastics –it is much cheaper for them to burn it!
Studies done in other countries show that incineration and high recycling figures are incompatible. In Geneva, they have had to start importing waste from Italy because their recycling figures are so high!
Power generation: The electricity will only benefit the operator as it will be sold on to the National Grid. We asked the people in Chineham, where Veolia’s‘ flagship’ incinerator started operating in 2004, if they have benefited yet from reduced council tax bills or cheaper electricity. The answer was a resounding ‘no’. (They call the incinerator their ‘silent and deadly neighbour.’)
Ash: The Environment Agency has recently admitted it does not "have 100% confidence" in its classification of incinerator bottom ash (IBA) as non-hazardous waste. For more on safety, see monitoring, below. Fly ash is toxic and has to be sent away to special landfill sites.
Government targets: The incinerator contravenes the Government-approved Waste Hierarchy which puts incineration at the very bottom of the pile. Veolia has had to re-name the incinerator an ‘Energy from Waste’ facility because they know it cannot meet the stringent requirements required to call it an ‘Energy Recovery Facility.’
Job creation: Nova Scotia in Canada achieved 50% diversion from landfill in 5 years and created 1000 jobs collecting and treating discarded materials. Another 2000 jobs have been created in the industries handling the collected material. Nearly all the separated materials are re-used in Nova Scotia’s own industries.
Carbon emissions: Incineration releases high levels of CO2, the main climate warming gas. Incineration is accompanied by twice or more the CO2 per unit of power than the same energy (as electricity or combined heat-and-power) produced from fossil fuel. The Environment Agency’s WRATE software is used to claim energy-from-waste is beneficial, but this depends on faulty assumptions on efficiency and bio-carbon. The better ATROPOS model found that “scenarios using incineration were amongst the poorest performing” according to a report produced in 2008.
Proximity to other facilities: The incinerator will also be near to a precious heritage site (Battlefield), a food enterprise centre and several food outlets as well as several thousand homes and prime farmland.
Monitoring emissions and your health: Veolia states that the proposed incinerator can easily be modified to meet possible future, more strict emission standards. So why not now? Monitoring the emissions for dioxins will only be done at six-monthly intervals with prior notice by taking samples from the flue gases, yet there are systems, approved by the EA, to monitor them continuously; why don’t they want to install them?
Most of Veolia’s studies to assess the impact of emissions have used computer modelling and no official research has been carried out into the actual health problems arising as a result of the emissions from the incinerators which have been built in the UK and elsewhere. Yet, there is growing and disturbing evidence that the very fine particles passing through the filters into the atmosphere stay suspended in the air and enter the bloodstream via the lungs causing immune reactions, particularly in the elderly, children and unborn babies.
Visual impact and design: With a building 27 metres/100 feet in height and a chimney height of 65 metres/200 feet; it will have a huge visual impact on the neighbourhood. Veolia’s pictures are all aerial views, and do not depict the actual size of the building as you will see it from the ground. In the Planning Application the photomontages have mostly been carefully taken from places where other buildings shield the full impact. As you can see from our cover picture of the Chineham incinerator, which used the same designer, nothing can disguise the ugliness and huge size of this proposed facility.
Community Liaison: Veolia set up a Community Liaison Group with some people from the local area. However, this consultation was on an “Energy Recovery Facility (ERF)” which fell into line with the Shropshire Waste Local Plan, not an Energy from Waste facility, which doesn’t.
In summer 2008, Shropshire County Council stopped Safe Waste in Shropshire putting leaflets in the Lantern giving the opposing view to incineration, saying that this was “political” and could not be allowed. There was nothing political about this, but it demonstrates the lack of democratic process being allowed in any discussion about the proposals.
Veolia’s track-record: Veolia has recently been fined £166,000 for the release of toxic fumes at its hazardous waste treatment plant in Liverpool and £30,235 for allowing 1,500 Cubic Metres of untreated sewage to flow into the sea at Dawlish. On 21 March 2009, fire destroyed a Veolia waste recycling warehouse in Birmingham. It has been fined in other countries as well for various offences including corruption. Investors were recently advised to sell their shares in Veolia and its profits recently (March 2008) fell by over 50%.
What you can do
Object to the incinerator, using any of the ‘reality’ arguments, above. They are all material planning considerations. You can write a very brief letter, card or email, but it needs to arrive by 30 April, 2009.
The registration number is: MS2009/0125/SY and can be viewed at: http://planning.shropshire.gov.uk/PlanAppDisp.asp?RecNum=59315 Or write to: Mr Malcolm Bell, Head of Planning and Development Control, Shropshire Council, Shirehall, Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury, SY2 6ND. Or: planning.development@shropshire.gov.uk.
YOU MUST INCLUDE THE REGISTRATION NUMBER: MS2009/0125/SY
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