The council told letsrecycle.com this week that a High Court ruling on August 11 over the Crymlyn Burrows waste treatment plant outside Swansea means that it could now move towards reaching recycling targets set by the Welsh Assembly.
The court case forms part of a long and controversial history of the plant, which was built in 2002 by HLC (Neath Port Talbot) Ltd, a subsidiary of HLC Environmental Projects Ltd, the UK arm of Portuguese utilities group HLC.
HLC (Neath Port Talbot) went into administration last year, owing the Bank of Scotland 40 million.
The bank hoped to recoup some of its loss by selling the machinery and plant on the open market. Yet Neath Port Talbot council, which originally had an agreement with HLC (Neath Port Talbot) to run the plant, wanted to purchase the equipment itself, to keep recycling and recovery operations running smoothly.
Last Friday, a High court judge paved the way for the council to buy the equipment, representing a partial victory for the authority.
Speaking after the court ruling, a council spokeswoman said: “This is a positive step for us. Today's judgement provides an important milestone in the council's attempt to support regional proposals for South West Wales to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.”
PFI
In court, the council's legal team argued that if the equipment, valued at about 2.7m, was removed, then its efforts to find a new Private Finance Initiative (PFI) partner would be “commercially hopeless”.
It would also have disrupted the day-to-day running of the recycling centre and may have left the authority facing heavy fines from regulators if more waste had gone to landfill instead of being recycled.
The council's barrister at the High Court hearing, Stephen Davies QC, told the judge the “under-performing” waste site “has been a disaster” both for Neath Port Talbot and neighbouring Bridgend Council.
He said, since the collapse of HLC, the centre meant the councils were having to pay about 52,000 a week more to dispose of their waste than had originally been planned. He also said that without a new partner and new investment, the council faced a loss of 67.5m over a 25-year period.
A spokeswoman for Neath Port Talbot Council said: “The decision will enable the council to put the plant up for sale so a new operator can be found as soon as possible.
Confident
The council is confident there will be a lot of interest in the proposal because the plant is a valuable facility with its own operating licence. Meanwhile the plant is operational and taking waste on a daily basis from both Neath Port Talbot and Bridgend.”
In the late 1990s, councils were encouraged to look at different ways of treating refuse. Bridgend and Neath Port Talbot councils decided to set up the Crymlyn Burrows waste plant to treat up to 170,000 tonnes of refuse a year.
Part of the waste would be turned into compost, part recycled and the rest burned off in an incinerator, which incurred the wrath of nearby residents, some of whom chained themselves to the plant while others set up a protest camp outside.
The residents, concerned about the potentially toxic nature of incinerator emissions, kept up a campaign of pressure.
A member of Stic (Stop the Incinerator Campaign) said, “We were shown shiny artists' impressions of the recycling plant, but what they left out were the incinerator stacks.”
In May 2002 the plant got a licence to operate. HLC claimed the 30 million Crymlyn Burrows plant would be “the first fully integrated waste management facility in the UK.” (see letsrecycle.com story)
“We can demonstrate practically that the integrated approach to the management of municipal waste is the right one”, said HLC chairman, Horacio Carvalho in 2002 when the plant started operating.
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The Bank of Scotland, involved in financing the project, claims Neath Port Talbot Council is now liable for the entire 40m debt of HLC. The claim is due to be tried before the High Court in November.
(With acknowledgements to Robin Turner, of the Western Mail)
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