Labour and the Slyfield Incinerator
The Surrey County
Council Planning Committee have rejected the Slyfield and Redhill proposals
but have given approval for a 110,000 tonne/year incinerator at Capel.
We are pleased that the scheme for Slyfield will not go ahead at least at present. However, we cannot be complacent and assume that the fight is over. Thames Waste Management have spent a lot of money developing their plans. Their incinerator was rejected mainly on the grounds that it was too big for the site and that location in the town. Although they have decided not to appeal, they might come back with plans for a smaller incinerator.
If it is accepted that incineration is the only feasible technical solution for waste disposal, then only one incinerator, with a capacity of 100,000 tonnes/year, will be needed in Surrey up to 2005. An incinerator of this size meets the recommendations of the Environmental Select Committee (see below).
There is time now to look at the alternatives such as pyrolysis. There is also time to improve the recycling rate. If nothing else, it has made the people of Guildford realise the importance of recycling and all of us must make the recycling initiatives work. The Government target is 14% recycling by 2002 and 25% by 2003. We have a lot of work to do to get there.
It is clear that the Surrey County Council officers as well as some prominent councillors would like to see an incinerator in Guildford. They appear to find it objectionable that there has been so much public protest.
They apparently remain happy to hand over their responsibilities for developing waste disposal policy to speculative contractors.
We think that more consideration should be given to defining a sensible 'proximity principle', that reflects the urban population densities and therefore the waste volumes created. There seems to be no particular merit in restricting it to county boundaries.
Environment Select Committee views.
In their advice to County Councillors, the planning officers pointed out
how inappropriate such a large incinerator was for the Slyfield site.
The visual impact would be felt not just in Slyfield and Burpham but in
many other parts of the town. County Councillors were taken to high viewpoints
such as Merrow Downs where it would be a very visible feature in the landscape.
It would also have an adverse effect on the River Wey, which is the beginning
of the Green Belt to the North, and on the Riverside Park.
The futuristic design proposed by Thames Waste Management (TWM) would not blend easily with the historic buildings of Guildford, and being bigger than the Cathedral it would dwarf everything else on the Slyfield Estate.
On the whole we were happy with the Officers' report but there are some disappointments. We do not like the very limited definition of the 'proximity principle'. According to Surrey planners it applies only to facilities in Surrey. But already we import vast amounts of waste from London, and export some to other sites outside the County including the Grundon waste site at Colnbrook near Slough.
The County planners' analysis does not satisfactorily take into account the need to minimise waste transportation. Approximately 100,000 tonnes of waste will originate from the Charlton Lane waste station at Shepperton, which is much nearer to Colnbrook than to Guildford, Redhill or Capel. The offer by S.Grundon Co. to burn 150,000 tonnes per annum of Surrey waste at their new Colnbrook incinerator is not taken into consideration in their assessments.
The Officers' have accepted TWM's calculations of the Traffic Impact, although our submission indicated that there would be problems with increased numbers of 44 ton juggernauts on local roads. They do not accept people's worries about emissions from the plant preferring to rely on the IPC approval granted by the Environment Agency, even though this is currently the subject of judicial review.
On the next pages we give our detailed reasons for rejecting this incinerator.
We also reproduce the script of a speech delivered in Guildford by the
Environment Minister, Michael Meacher MP, outlining the Government's position
on waste management.
Read
our reports to County Council and the Environment Agency
Planning
Issues and the
Environmental Issues
The Environment Select Committee
in its 5th report expressed the view that if a significant number of large
incinerators are built, operating on long contracts, then the long-term
prospects for recycling will be diminished.
They recommended that incineration should be used only for SORTED waste, after reclaiming valuable materials.
They argued that the average size of currently planned incinerators was too large, and that the Government should make clear that incinerators above 100,000 tonnes/year capacity would not be approved.
The capacity of the proposed incinerator for Slyfield is more than twice this recommended size.
