Planning system threatens Landfill Directive implementation, ESA warns

Dirk Hazell, ESA chief executive, said: “Members are
ready, willing and able to invest but we are profoundly concerned about the
inability of the existing planning system to deliver the new and enhanced
infrastructure needed to enable Britain's waste management industry to
deliver compliance with the directive.

“Our members experience an inefficient, unresponsive and dilatory system that does not provide sufficient certainty for capital investment.”
In further comment, ESA reckons its member companies are willing to rise
to targets such as ceasing co-disposal at non-hazardous sites from 2004.

In its response to government consultation on the directive, the ESA supports the government’s view that co-disposal should be allowed at non-hazardous sites until 2004, with acceptance criteria and treatment requirements from 2002. (Co-disposal is the mixing of hazardous material with other material in the same landfill).

But, the association warns that: “As a result of these acutely short timescales, very urgent and detailed consultation by the government is imperative, together with quality guidance, so that the availability or otherwise of infrastructure can be properly assessed and barriers to implementation overcome.”

Landfill – “well engineered”

The ESA’s response defends the future role of landfill.
It endorses the government’s “recognition in the preamble to the consultation that landfill may remain the Best Practicable Environmental option (BPEO) for certain wastes in certain circumstances, and it will continue to play a role in waste management in the foreseeable future.

The UK’s landfill sites are well-engineered, says the association, adding that they operate to very high regulatory standards and set best practice within the EU. “Landfill will continue to provide an essential underpinning component of integrated waste management solutions well into the future, with increased focus on hazardous waste treatment and processing residues which have been processed to final storage quality.”

The way within which the directive is transposed into legislation across the UK is seen as an “essential parameter” for delivery of the government’s sustainable development strategy and avoidance of proceedings for failure to comply with EU obligations.

A key issue under the directive is how waste is treated ahead of landfill. The word “treatment” is given in the directive without any definite meaning so how the word treatment is interpreted in the UK is critical.

The ESA welcomes work the Environment Agency is undertaking. “However, while the Agency can provide a great deal of technical expertise, it lacks the practical experience of ESA’s Members in planning and operating treatment facilities. ESA must therefore be extensively consulted on the production of the guidance and we need to be involved from the outset and not merely be perfunctorily consulted on mature drafts.”