The fire involved 3,000 tonnes of baled plastic waste which had been stored in a warehouse building at Jameson Road for onward transport to an energy from waste facility by waste firm Reform Energy.
Reform Energy currently has plans to build its own 80,000 tonnes per-year-capacity energy from waste plant on the site which will take waste from commercial sources.
Nine fire crews attended the incident following a call out at 18:41 on Saturday evening, with fire fighters remaining on site today to continue to monitor the blaze.
Reform Energy
A spokesman for Reform Energy told letsrecycle.com that the company’s managing director John Potter is on the site this morning liaising with fire crews and the Environment Agency over the management of the site.
The spokesman added: “We apologise for any inconvenience that may have been caused to local people.”
The company has recently submitted a revision to its planning application for the development on the Jameson Road site, and had hoped to start work this year for the plant to begin operating in 2018.
Reform Energy had been storing baled waste material at a warehouse on the site for onward transport to energy from waste facilities.
The site is close to a household waste recycling centre operated by Lancashire county council and a Suez-run landfill site, both of which have been unaffected by the blaze.
A spokesman for Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service told letsrecycle.com that due to the nature of the material involved, fire crews had opted not to extinguish the blaze using pumps and instead performing a controlled burn, to prevent water run-off into nearby watercourses.
Controlled burn
In a statement, the Fire Service added: “If they had directed water onto the fire rather than to prevent it from spreading to the bales stored elsewhere on the site the fire would have put out much more smoke and it would have added to the volume of water, contaminated by the fire, to prevent from draining away off site.
“The plastic bales are actually used for fuel and burn cleanly in furnaces, though less so in this setting. Two fire engines and crews remain on site, a thin plume of smoke still rises from the remains of the fire as it burns out.”
Material is expected to continue burning throughout today, although fire crews may take further action to extinguish the blaze if conditions change.
Enquiries are underway to ascertain the cause of the fire which it is suspected may have been started deliberately.
The 16-year-old boy, who attended a police station yesterday morning for questioning has been released pending further enquiries until 16 June.
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