A local MP has called plans for an energy from waste (EfW) incinerator in St Dennis, Cornwall outdated and has called for the Treasury to assess whether the facility represents value for money.
Speaking in a Backbench Business Adjournment Debate in the House of Commons last week (March 26), Liberal Democrat MP for St Austell and Newquay, Stephen Gilbert, said that there are cheaper, cleaner and greener alternatives to incinerating waste.
The St Dennis incinerator is being developed under a 30-year waste PFI contract between SITA UK and Cornwall council, signed in 2006 (see letsrecycle.com story). Cornwall council and SITA have been fighting a long-running legal battle with local residents over the development of the 240,000 tonne-per-annum capacity plant.
Commenting on the plans last week, Mr Gilbert told fellow MPs: The policy of incineration is being pursued across the country. Specifically, an incinerator is planned in St Dennis in my constituency. Since before I was a parliamentary candidate I have said consistently that Cornwall should not go down the route of incinerating its municipal waste.
He went on to argue that incineration is anoff-the-shelf easy win method of dealing with municipal waste when alternative methods are available that he claimed are more efficient and better for the environment.
He added: Cornwall currently recycles just 37% of its waste and has no real plans to improve that rate. Recycling rates cannot be improved while trying to feed an incinerator that is ever-hungry for material to burn. The best local authorities now recycle more than 60%, and recycling alone could deliver 12 million-worth of savings a year to the council.
Appeal
Finally he appealed to DCLG Minister Nick Boles to get our right honourable Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to look at this issue on a value-for-money basis, adding: We are in the last-chance saloon, but it is not too late.
Opponents to the development have previously failed in their legal attempt to have the planning permission for the plant overturned, with the Supreme Court ruling in July 2012 refusing to overrule the councils original decision (see letsrecycle.com story).
Anti-incinerator campaign group the Cornwall Waste Forum then called for the council to review the plans in the wake of a report produced by waste consultancy Eunomia which stated that scrapping the proposals could save up to 320 million, as the facility represented value for money.
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But, at a meeting of the councils Waste Development Advisory Panel (WDAP) in January 2013 councillors rejected the alternative waste disposal plan put forward by Eunomia and vowed to press ahead with the plans (see letsrecycle.com story).
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