Northamptonshire council backs 129 million PFI request

At a cabinet meeting yesterday (April 22), Northamptonshire county councillors approved the submission of an Outline Business Plan to Defra in an attempt to secure £129 million of PFI funding.

The submission was approved by their counterparts in Milton Keynes earlier this month, and represents the latest development in a long-term waste partnership between the two counties that was originally agreed in December 2006 (see letsrecycle.com story).

It is envisaged that municipal waste produced in the two areas will have increased from its current 500,000 tonnes per annum to 700,000 tonnes by 2026, and the project aims to deal with residual waste at the same time as increasing recycling and composting rates to in excess of the national target of 50% by 2020.

Councillor Ben Smith, the deputy leader of Northamptonshire county council, said: “The OBC is the result of a year's collaboration between the two authorities to explore the different technologies available to treat residual waste, and to look at the legal and financial benefits of working together.

“Northamptonshire county council already works in partnership with the local district and borough councils, who are responsible for the collection and recycling of waste. Their inclusion in the development of this project has been of paramount importance. We need to be sure the steps we take now will help us all in the future.”

Reference project

That technological assessment saw the councils examine a long list of 12 different technology options for treating their residual waste, before arriving at a single combination of technologies that is included in the OBC as the reference project.

The draft OBC document states that: “The technology chosen for the reference project was biological mechanical treatment with advanced thermal treatment of resulting refuse-derived fuel and in-vessel composting of biodegradable material.

“This reference project does not represent a decision on what facilities should be procured but does provide a basis for a more detailed analysis of performance and cost for the purposes of the OBC alone.”

While mass-burn incineration made the shortlist of technologies to be examined, both councils have expressed their opposition to the technology in the past, and while gasification was also considered on its own, the draft OBC explains that “there were no economies of scale to be achieved through joint working” on that option.

The reference project outlines the building of two MBT facilities, at a capital cost of £64.8 million, with the capacity to process 332.931 tonnes of residual waste a year, while two in-vessel composting plants, costing £9.5 million, would deal with up to 58,596 tonnes of waste annually.

At the same time a thermal treatment plant, using gasification technology, would be built at a cost of £69.5 million, processing up to 149,819 tonnes a year, with two new waste transfer stations, costing £3.9 million, dealing with up to 116,000 tonnes per year.

The OBC sees the councils make clear that they are aware of concerns over dealing with residues from the MBT process, and believe that the inclusion of a thermal treatment plant in the reference project proposal will address those issues.

“The PFI allocation criteria require authorities to demonstrate a high degree of certainty around the disposal of MBT/BMT residues before credits are awarded,” it says. “With this in mind the councils have selected a reference project that includes the thermal treatment of the residues created through the MBT process.

“In addition to considering the building of thermal treatment facilities, the councils are also exploring the potential of marketing the material as a fuel. Contact has already been made with authorities local to the councils, who have the potential to use this fuel to supplement their own processes.”

Site

Adopting a similar approach to that undertaken by Norfolk county council earlier this month in preparation for its own PFI waste treatment proposal (see letsrecycle.com story), the OBC also includes two reference sites which could, potentially, be used for a successful bidder for the PFI project.

Milton Keynes council has put forward a location that it owns Old Wolverton, opposite an existing materials recycling facility (MRF), while Northampton county council has proposed a 17-acre site at an unspecified location as the potential location for a waste treatment facility. Both sites are owned by the relevant council.

Currently waste collection and disposal functions in Milton Keynes are contracted out to a number of companies, including WRG, which operates the council's only landfill site, at Bletchley.

In Northamptonshire, all the districts and boroughs manage their collections in-house, with the exception of Daventry and East Northamptonshire, while landfill sites owned by Biffa, Viridor, WRG and HW Martin Waste are used for disposal purposes.

With the OBC scheduled for submission to Defra by the end of the month, it is hoped that a decision will made on whether or not to approve the OBC by July 2008, allowing it to be advertised for bidders in the Official Journal of the European Union in October.

The aim is then to select a preferred bidder by May 2010, with a planning application submitted in September of the same year and the new facilities operational by September 2013.