Steve's trip to Chineham

Anti-incinerator protestor gatecrashes councillors’ Hampshire burner trip - on his bicycle!

Members of Shropshire Council's Strategic Planning Committee on a guided tour of Veolia’s incinerator in Chineham on Monday 9th July, were surprised to be joined by an extra member of their party - Steve Boulding, pictured on the left.

For some time, Safe Waste in Shropshire has suspected that visitors to the incinerator get a kind of ‘Royal Visit’ – all fresh paint and flowers rather than noise, fumes and lorries. In order to find out, Safe Waste in Shropshire supporter, Steve Boulding, got on his bike, literally, and managed to slip through the incinerator's front gate and talk his way onto the tour – in Chineham.

Steve, who is in his 60s, and was Green parliamentary candidate for North Shropshire back in May, cycled the 12 miles from his home in N Shropshire to Shrewsbury Station, then again from Basingstoke to Chineham, repeating it all for the return trip – a 40 mile cycle in order to find out for us all just what councillors get to see and hear when they visit Veolia’s ‘flagship’ incinerator.

Travel note - Wrexham and Shropshire trains are particularly cycle-friendly and comfortable!
This is Steve’s account of the tour:

‘The five Shropshire councillors, Arthur Walpole, Tudor Bebb, David Evans, Karen Calder and Stuart West. were accompanied by three Council officers including Ian Kilby, Head of Development Management and Malcolm Bell, Malcolm Bell, Head of Planning and Development Control and we were all shown a slick video presentation and an edited guided tour.

Andy MacQueen of Veolia ES, Hampshire seemed proud of his "high-tech power station" (below, right) but made many misleading and inaccurate comments about the whole waste process.

He stated that their filters (which are apparently renewed only every ten years or so), remove ALL particles from the flue gases before discharge. When I asked him about pm 2.5's and below, i.e. the particularly dangerous ones, he asked "Ah, but how do you measure them?" I said that I thought, as the engineer, he might know the answer to that one! Veolia ES Shropshire was claiming to be monitoring PM2.5s at Sundorne Sports village in 2008.

Half of the feedstock comes from south and west Hampshire because “Portsmouth and Southampton couldn't cope” (and some from outside the county) and that "a percentage" was commercial and a "very small percentage" industrial, including such items as “garage waste”. He acknowledged that as households compost and recycle more, that other waste streams – commercial and industrial - will make up a bigger percentage of feedstock. ‘

At no time was the fact that waste figures are falling mentioned, or that the Hampshire incinerators recently applied to the Environment Agency to burn more waste than their permits originally allowed. The Veolia ES website laments that the UK “only recycles 30% of waste’ – a somewhat misleading statement since as at 2009 the figure was already 38.8% (that’s all kinds of waste) and it continues to rise.

When one of the councillors remarked that they expected more noise from the plant, Mr MacQueen “remembered” that there was some maintenance going on and the plant was operating at a fraction of its normal capacity. Previous showcase Shropshire visits to the incinerator have also coincided with “maintenance”. We wondered which process/malfunction had produced the pronounced dent in the pipework (see photo on left, above)

He seemed to regard the lime residue resulting from the de-acidification of the flue gases, as an inert and safe product (no mention of what else it might contain) and said it is trucked elsewhere. He referred to bottom ash as "aggregate residue", saying it was used "in road building and construction". In fact foamed concrete containing bottom ash, whatever you choose to call it, is currently banned by the Highways Agency and other contractors because of its unstable nature.

Although the glossy brochure given to the councillors contains the familiar line which seems to form part of every media report about the incinerator, "…provides 7MW of electricity, enough to meet the electricity demand of 10,000 local homes", Mr MacQueen made no claims as to how much electricity is actually produced, merely confirming that it is sold to the National Grid.

I had to own up to the councillors that I hadn't actually cycled all the way from Shropshire that morning, Nonetheless, I think some of them were impressed by my cheek!

While I was outside awaiting the councillors, I counted fourteen refuse trucks going in between approx. 1100 and 1145, at which point, a security man took up position outside and started intercepting trucks and telling them to turn round and come back later. Ten minutes later, the councillors' coach arrived. Curious....’

Miriam Walton, secretary of Safe Waste in Shropshire commented:

‘We are very proud of Steve’s effort which confirms just what kind of flawed and incomplete information the councillors are being given to make this vital decision which will effect Shropshire people’s finances and health for the next quarter-century.

The Chair of Chineham Parish Council, Chris Tomblin, had urged our councillors to take a route through Chineham which would let them see the real visual impact of the incinerator (see photo on the right). He also sent a list of comments and questions about the incinerator which we passed on to Malcolm Bell and the Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee several days before the trip, Steve reported that they were ignored, as were another set of questions provided to Mr Bell by campaigner Nick Hall about the operation of the incinerator.

We have also been shocked to learn that some local residents in Harlescott have taken Veolia’s repeated claims about the electricity generated by the incinerator to mean that they will get free power. They will not, and we urge the local media to correct this misapprehension.’