Viridor granted permission for £150m Cardiff EfW
10 June 2010
Cardiff city council has approved waste management firm Viridor's plans for a 350,000 tonnes-a-year capacity energy-from-waste plant near the city's docks after having blocked an initial application.
The council's planning committee yesterday (June 9) followed planning officer's recommendation to grant permission for the renewed application, which was said to include "a number of key differences" from the application submitted to the council at the end of 2008.
Plans for the £150 million plant at Trident Park in the Splott region of the city were refused by the council in July 2009 over concerns about the amount of waste that would have to brought into the area to meet the plant's capacity, as well as issues over the disposal of fly-ash from the site (see letsrecycle.com story).
As part of the approval, Viridor is expected to pay £182,096 towards "transportation infrastructure enhancements" in the city, as well as outlining travel plans around the site and devising a liaison group to work with the local community of Splott.
Furthermore, the planning document states that the plant will only be able to process "waste arising from within the South-East Wales region", with Viridor hopeful of using the plant to serve local businesses as well as the local authorities that make up the Prosiect Gwyrdd partnership - which is comprised of Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan, Monmouth, Newport and Caerphilly councils.
Commenting on the news that its plans had been approved by the city's planning committee, Dan Cooke, external affairs manager at Viridor, said: "We are very pleased that Cardiff council's planning committee has granted planning permission for our energy-from-waste combined heat and power facility and we are positive about the benefits this scheme offers the area.".
Contentious
The plant has proven a contentious issue in the region with campaign groups, led by the local Friends of the Earth, concerned about the impact the development of such a large-scale facility could have on Cardiff's recycling performance (see letsrecycle.com story).
Mr Cooke stressed that the waste management firm had worked with the local community in developing the proposals. He said: "We listened long and hard to the views of local residents, local councillors and politicians and considered a range of views and issues raised in detail in relation to our proposals.
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"This dialogue has been extremely useful and our intended community liaison group will allow us to continue our close contact as the project progresses."
Furthermore, Viridor said it had received 20 expressions of interest from local businesses about using energy generated by the Trident Park plant.
Approval for the Cardiff plant comes one week after an application for a facility of the same size on the other side of the River Severn was refused by Bristol city council, where councillors went against planning officers recommendations to block the development of an energy-from-waste facility at Avonmouth (see letsrecycle.com story.
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