Debate heats up on future of waste

For a start you would be hard pressed to find an uglier or more smelly place anywhere in Oxfordshire. Close by, steam clouds poured out of the giant Didcot cooling towers, while all around were mountains of waste, piled high waiting to be buried in the ground.

Yes, you could hardly argue with my guide's opinion. If you wanted to build a giant plant to burn the county's waste, Sutton Courtenay landfill site certainly has some distinct advantages.

In a few weeks' time, the Waste Recycling Group (WRG) will submit an application to build a giant incinerator in the heart of this massive landfill site.

The energy from waste plant (efw) would be significantly bigger than at first supposed. It will have the capacity to burn 300,000 tonnes of waste. For in addition to burning 200,000 tonnes a year from households, WRG wants to burn 100,000 tonnes of commercial waste.

The plant will cost in excess of £100m to build. But Oxfordshire County Council has decided that faced with cutting back on waste disposed of in landfill sites in order to avoid crippling fines, burning it must be the way forward. Other technologies were looked at and rejected.

And within weeks of announcing it wanted an incinerator, County Hall revealed that the Spanish-owned WRG, which operates the landfill site at Sutton Courtenay, was on a shortlist of just two companies. The other is Viridor, which not entirely by chance, happens to run the other major landfill site in Oxfordshire at Ardley.

Friends of the Earth, who oppose burning waste on grounds that it will add to global warming, fear that County Hall had as good as made up its mind, even before the tendering process had begun. Sutton Courtenay residents will certainly tell you they had long feared that yet another huge chimney was being earmarked for their neighbourhood.

Yet everyone seems to have been taken by surprise by the speed of developments, with a contract expected to be awarded next spring and the incinerator operating by 2012.

The chairman of Sutton Courtenay Parish Council, Michael Jenkins, believes the site's size, history and location close to the A34 all point to the landfill site, near Didcot, as being the hottest of favourites, when it comes to the location of the incinerator.

But he makes clear that local people are far from happy. "I have had a considerably increased postbag and not surprisingly there does not seem to be much support."

He said residents were concerned about vast amounts of rubbish having to be brought in on already clogged up roads. "At the moment a great deal of the rubbish going into landfill comes in by rail from London. But all the rubbish to be incinerated will be coming by road. The A34 is already filled to capacity."

And despite repeated reassurances from the county council that modern plants are safe and must be licensed by the Environment Agency and the Health Protection Agency, health concerns persist.

"There is concern about the amount of toxic waste that will be coming out the chimney. Most things will be burnt, including some really nasty stuff. Yes, it will be regulated and controlled, but things can go wrong. Some toxic gases can escape no matter how sophisticated it is."

Mr Jenkins also points to the fact that the toxic residue would also end up being buried at Sutton Courtenay.

But WRG's efforts to reassure the public have begun in earnest. The first of a series of exhibitions was held in Didcot yesterday before moving to Sutton Courtenay Village Hall today from 2pm to 8 pm. Tomorrow, it will be at the WRG offices, at the landfill site, Appleford Sidings (off A4310) from 10am to 2pm.

The company will no doubt be setting out its record managing 70 recycling sites, while operating five energy-from-waste facilities, including two in the UK. It is part of of the Spanish construction giant FCC.

Viridor, part of the UK based Pennon Group, already provides an incinerator at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth and is constructing a state-of-the-art facility in Slough.

Paul Green, senior estates manager of WRG, said the company had been working on the project for three years. "Over the last 18 months things have come to fruition. We always knew that Sutton Courtenay was going to be one of the strongest sites."

For a start this is a site where a 95m high chimney would not be considered an eyesore. It would still be slightly smaller than the 100m cooling towers next door. Even more significantly, the 650-acre site will easily absorb a 130m long incinerator at its heart, almost half a mile from the nearest houses.

Mr Green said that going for a larger site than the county had asked for would result in economies of scale, reducing the costs for the council taxpayer. But he insisted the extra 100,000 tonnes would be from companies and businesses, not from London, as some may fear.

Viridor is also proposing a plant to burn 300,000 tonnes of waste a year, and like WRG is proposing an education/visitors' centre, only it promises "an exciting opportunity" to show dinosaur footprints, uncovered during the quarrying work next door.

Dan Cooke, external affairs manager for Viridor, said: "The proposals for Ardley will make use of an existing waste management site with good motorway links."

Both companies want to design, build and operate plants, with the county council charged a gate fee for every tonne of waste going into the incinerator.

With the little matter of more than £100m to recoup, WRG and Viridor will be seeking a contract lasting 25 years.

For Andrew Wood, of Oxfordshire Friends of the Earth, this will result in the county council finding itself in a tight commercial straitjacket, having to commit itself to guaranteeing high levels of waste to keep the incinerator fires burning. "This will make it harder to achieve high recyclable rates, without incurring financial penalties," he told The Oxford Times.

But the two firms argue EfW, rather than being a substitute for recycling, actually complements it. They will also claim to have a foot firmly planted in the conservation camp as well.

An area of the Sutton Courtenay site already takes garden waste. Now as part of its "integrated waste strategy," the Sutton Courtenay Resource Recovery Park, as it will be known, is also bidding to be the site of the county's new food and green waste treatment centre.

The county has invited bids for a plant to process between 37,000 and 49,000 tonnes of kitchen and green waste a year, which it wants to see up and running within a year. Tenders were invited in November and WRG can point to the fact that it already has planning permission to build such a facility. It will also put forward the idea of creating a large household recycling centre on the site, to alleviate pressure on the busy recycling facility on Drayton Road.

Electricity generated from burning waste would generate enough electricity to provide power for up to 35,000 homes. Both companies also hope to offer Combined Heat and Power (CHP) processes, which involves using the waste as a combustion fuel for power generation, with the steam used locally for heating.

"Burning waste in an EfW plant creates less carbon dioxide than from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil," said Mr Green. "The principles of burning have not changed much. But what happens to the gases has much improved. The technology has changed so much emissions generated through the combustion process go through a three-stage clean-up before being released to the atmosphere "The Millennium firework display in London discharged more dioxins in 20 minutes than the largest incinerator in the UK would in 100 years. And all plants built today have the ability to be upgraded, to ensure they remain up to date."

Viridor will propose a Combined Heat and Power facility, with an electricity output linked into the national grid at Bicester. As part of its planning submission, Viridor will be developing a heat plan to show how excess heat might be used in farming or horticulture.

Andrew Wood continues to believe that going for incineration flies both in the face of public opposition and sound environmental policy. For him it is essentially already an out-of-date technology.

"Studies show that Mechanical Biological Treatment, where waste is mechanically sorted to recover plastics and metals, and then subject to the biological process of anaerobic digestion are top performers in terms of minimising greenhouse gas emissions."

The Friends of the Earth have expressed worries about ash left behind in the incinerators raising another public health issue.

Mr Wood said: "There is good evidence that this ash, that goes into landfill, is contaminated with heavy metals and toxic materials. I think we are going to see some tightening of regulations. Some of the things people are saying are premature."

He said negotiations to draw up a new waste framework in Europe could also bring about a ban on burning commercial waste.

Michael Hall, Ardley Parish Council's spokesman for transport, said: "We've had the landfill here for years and had to put up with the disruption caused by traffic. We had believed there was light at the end of the tunnel, with the site going back to agriculture.

"An incinerator would mean all Oxfordshire's waste having to be brought in on a small road. Villagers like Weston-on-the-Green and Middleton Stoney would also be affected."

He said there was also concern that Viridor had a limited track record when it came to operating EfW plants. He added: "The county council's selection was made on business grounds, with environmental impact only being looked at afterwards."

When County Hall revealed that only two hats remained in the ring, Cherwell District Council's leader Barry Wood caused wry smiles in South Oxfordshire by pointing out that it was simply not logical to build an incinerator in the Cherwell area because it enjoyed the best recycling record in the county.

"It would be better," he said, "to locate the facility near to sources of the highest waste tonnages for treatment, not the lowest." The incinerator issue does have the potential to cause a north-south divide in Oxfordshire. As yet it has not come even close to boiling point