The councils comments were made as Sterecycle last week revealed that it plans to recommence waste treatment operations at the Rotherham facility soon, after meeting various stipulations placed on it.
The plant was closed following an explosion which left one employee dead and another badly injured (see letsrecycle.com story), prompting Rotherham to introduce contingency measures for the 25,000 tonnes-a-year of waste it was sending to the facility.
These included it sending extra material to Veolia Environment Services energy-from-waste incinerator in Sheffield (see letsrecycle.com story).
And a spokeswoman for the council last week confirmed these arrangements were continuing as it had had no representation from Sterecycle over the proposed reopening of the plant.
The 500 tonnes of residual domestic waste usually processed at the Sterecycle plant each week is now being dealt with by the authoritys various partner organisations and with Veolia Environmental Services, who are taking extra on a temporary basis she said.
Sterecycle
In a statement, the company said: Sterecycle, the waste treatment and power company, has announced that it will soon recommence waste treatment operations at its Rotherham plant following an internal investigation into the cause of an incident on 11 January which killed one employee and seriously injured another.
And, speaking to letsrecycle.com, a spokeswoman for Sterecycle said it was unable to comment on the exact date when the plant would reopen. She said: We just know that it is going to be in the coming weeks. There are certain stipulations to follow before they can be recommence operations at the site.
The autoclave specialist explained that it would initially recommence waste processing using its undamaged autoclave, with the other being damaged in the explosion. Sterecycle said the damaged autoclave will be repaired and brought back into operation over the coming weeks.
Tom Shields, chief executive of Sterecycle, said: The past several weeks have obviously been a very sad time for everyone. Were looking forward to getting plant safely back in action so we can continue with our expansion plans and continue to provide our customers with the good service they expect.
Sterecycle has appointed Swiss-owned process safety specialists ABB Engineering to lead an internal investigation into the incident. The company said it would implement recommendations made by ABB.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said that the company would also need to comply with stipulations set out by the health watchdog before work could begin again. This is because the company was subjected to an enforcement notice following the explosion.
All we could say is our investigation is continuing, she said. However, we cannot say what we would require the company to do on site.
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