A new waste incinerator on the edge of Cannock Chase will not make Staffordshire a dumping ground for the West Midlands, according to council bosses.
Staffordshire County Council’s waste chief has defended the authority’s plans after coming under fire from a newly created campaign group called SAIN, or Staffordshire Against Incineration. The group argues the proposed incinerator at Four Ashes is unnecessary and that the ash from the rubbish will still have to be put into landfill.
The council claims the new facility, which will handle 300,000 tons of waste each year, is the only way to deal with the county’s growing rubbish mountain.
It will generate enough electricity to power 24,000 homes and is a key part of the county council’s vision of sending no waste to landfill by 2020.
Ian Benson, the authority’s director of waste, said: “The campaigners are motivated by a set of ideals which we entirely sympathise with. In a perfect world it would be great if we could ensure that everyone reduced their waste to an absolute minimum.
“Unfortunately, we have the difficult job of dealing with the reality of a growing population and increasing household waste.
“Currently, Staffordshire does not have enough waste treatment facilities to manage all the household and commercial waste it produces.
“In Staffordshire we send 1.25 million tons of waste a year to other authority areas. We send more waste to other parts of the West Midlands and further afield than any other of our neighbours or partners.
“The proposed facility at Four Ashes would only ever process an absolute maximum of 300,000 tons per year. This is just under a quarter of the county’s shortfall, meaning we will still treat significantly less waste than it produces.”
He added: “Staffordshire is not an island, and we need to co-operate to ensure we deliver the most cost effective and environmentally acceptable approaches to managing our waste.
“On the issue of environmental pollution, this technology will be state-of-the-art. The technology is tried and tested and Four Ashes will meet rigorous checks to ensure it achieves the highest emissions standards.”
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3 Comments
Incinerator is £158m wasted on future of recycling failure.
Staffordshire does not need a second incinerator. The waste burner on the edge of Stoke-on-Trent is shared with Staffordshire and already causes Stoke city council limit recycling, as the incinerator would be short of waste if it recycled more. The Staffordshire outline business case for the PFI waste burner admits an 80,000 plant would meet all government and EU targets. They expect only 140,000 tonnes going to the plant would be Staffordshire municipal solid waste. Even before the plant starts working this capacity will need to be revised down again as recycling rises. They already plan to take waste from 36 miles away in Nuneaton. As recycling rises and packaging is reduced the lorry convoys to fed the plant could be making 100 mile round trips to find enough waste.
The public is being misled into thinking there is over a million tonnes of waste than could be burned. The largest non-household waste in Staffs is power-station ash. The best councils in the county could be recycling around 60% of their waste next year.
I wonder why nobody believes a word they say??
At £148million plus [with £60million extras already in the pipeline to deal with PM2.5s from 2011!, and then a further £100million from 2016 to deal with capture of Carbon Dioxide because the plant is a CHP and electricity generator] of course no one believes a word they say.
Just look at what they are doing in Lake County Indiana in the offering for the treatment of 560,000 tons of waste per year and the production of BioEthanol. At a cost of US$150million [day £80/90million] this equates to less than a third of the current costs for the proposal for Four Ashes Staffs. Wake up everyone this means that after just four years of operation the Company building the plant could reduce the treatment costs to a Zero charge after around 6 years and give us rates and tax payers reductions. Tax Payers unite aginst this proposal.