A £100m incinerator to burn Oxfordshire's waste will be built near either Sutton Courtenay or Ardley.

The Oxford Mail can reveal tonight that the choice of site for the giant plant has been narrowed to just two locations.

Both are at existing landfill tip sites, where the bulk of the county's waste is currently buried.

Oxfordshire County Council wants to build an incinerator capable of burning at least 200,000 tonnes of waste a year and generate electricity for thousands of homes.

The council announced that the incinerator would be built either by the Spanish owned-Waste Recycling Group, which operates the landfill site at Sutton Courtenay, between Abingdon and Didcot, or Viridor, which runs the site at Ardley, near Bicester.

The two companies will produce detailed proposals later this month, with final tenders submitted in the autumn.

The contract will be awarded by the council next spring, with the incinerator planned to go into operation by 2012.

Chris Cousins, the council's head of sustainable development, said: "These plants can and do operate in the middle of cities.

"The plant must meet strict requirements. It would have to be licensed by the Environment Agency and the Health Protection Agency, who would simply not allow anything unsafe to go ahead."

Michael Jenkins, chairman of Sutton Courtenay Parish Council, said: "Local people will hear this news with dread.

"They are concerned about the health issues. People living near the landfill site have put up with operational problems, smell and noise. This will exacerbate them.

" At least with landfill it was going to end when the land was full. This will go on forever."