MMAG & Incineration – where do we stand !
We believe that incineration;
- should not automatically replace landfill as the solution to disposal of residual waste.
- undermines the incentive to maximise recycling of which Central Beds has a commendable record and we look forward to recycling even more. We challenge others to match our recycling record – we can all do more.
- avoids addressing the more fundamental challenge of why so much waste is produced in the first place.
- Nevertheless even with optimum recycling there may remain an amount of residual waste (even incineration will produce residual waste) but this should only be incinerated as an ‘absolute last resort’ in the absence of any alternative.
- Why therefore should Rookery Pit be the site for an incinerator of absolute last resort for the East Midlands and East of England ? Is it appropriate to place this monster in Rookery Pit which – as the rest of the country achieves higher levels of recycling – will need to look further and further a field for waste to incinerate in order to maintain optimum efficiency. Incineration will become an end in itself rather than a means to an end; a problem and not a solution and on our doorstep !
- We predict the EU will eventually penalise incineration in the same way as landfill – but by then Rookery Pit will have been destroyed as a rural landscape.
Covanta Verus BEaR – Can you Tell the Difference? |
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COVANTA
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BEaR
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| Background | |
| Covanta is a private company specialising in waste management seeking large scale developments across England and Wales to maximise economies of scale (i.e. reduce their costs) | Central Bedfordshire Authority (no longer including Bedford Borough or Luton who have withdrawn) group seeking solutions to aid reduction of land-fill |
| What do they plan to build? | |
| A regional Incinerator handling waste from Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire; plus potentially Milton Keynes; Hertfordshire; Northamptonshire; Cambridgeshire; Winsor and Maidenhead. | Not specified, for company who wins the contract to decide. Could be an incinerator. |
| Where are they proposing to build? | |
| Rookery Pit. | Brogborough landfill, but winning contractor can use their own site if preferred. So Covanta could bid and win and choose Rookery Pit. |
| When will it operate during the week? | |
| 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. Initial plans are for no Sunday opening and lorry movements 7am – 7pm. However on Bank Holiday Mondays they will open that day and the Sunday. We also know from Brogborough Landfill how original agreements can then be amended due to ‘operational and economic pressures’. | Not specified – for Company who wins contract to decide |
| Will I really notice whatever is built and opened? | |
| Oh yes…….Building roughly the height of one of the Cardington Hangers. Chimney stack(s) taller than the brick works chimneys | Not specified, for company who wins the contract to decide. If an incinerator then smaller than Covanta but still large scale as the actual operation of of an incinerator dictates the minimum size the building and chimney stack can be. |
| What Waste will be handled? | |
| Household, industrial and commercial waste. | Household waste |
| How will waste get to the site? | |
| All by road. Covanta have publicly discounted the use of rail as too expensive. | Depends on contractor and site. If Brogborough then clearly all by road. |
| Surely any traffic will be accommodated on the new A421? | |
| No. The new A421 was designed to handle the existing over use of the road network with built in capacity for the housing and business growth designated for Bedford Borough as part of their regeneration plans. The volume of lorry traffic Covanta admit to currently is 300 lorry movements and 150 car movements a day. This will severely comprise the road network as the traffic will most likely use the new Marston Moreteyne junction, clogging this up and then travelling behind the village and the sports field on the old A421 to Green Lane, Stewartby. | Not specified, for company who wins the contract to decide location. However any development will be large in scale and reliant on lorry traffic and hence negatively impact on the road network. |
| Could we end up with both BEaR and Covanta? | |
| Yes – though unlikely. Covanta will clearly bid for the BEaR work and their economies of scale would probably be appealing. | Yes – though unlikely. Covanta will clearly bid for the BEaR work and their economies of scale would probably be appealing. |
| What is Bedford Borough’s position? | |
| Awaiting a clear statement, but Bedford Borough LibDems have been consistently against incineration from the very start, so this could be an indication regarding the new Mayor. | Withdrawn from BEaR and looking at how to address their landfill challenges through greater recycling. |
| What is Central Bedfordshire’s position? | |
| Publicly, totally opposed due to scale and bringing in waste from outside of Bedfordshire. | Highly supportive; their concept. Keen to continue desperate apparent spiralling costs. |
| Company Websites | |
| Covanta’s Website | BEaR website |
Click Here to view Main Covanta Page |
Click Here to view Main BEaR Page |
Hugh Roberts, Chair of MMAG said:
“The Marston Vale is now able to breathe clean air with the closure of Brogborough Landfill site and Stewartby brickworks. Who knows what we will breathe coming out of the incinerator chimney”
Additional Information |
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| Arguments Against Rookery Pit Site | Media Articles etc Heart FM article |
| Campaign against EfW proposals | Previous Incinerator Updates |
This page has the following sub pages.
Dear Stewart,
I have sent the following letter to Nadine Dorries about the incinerator.
Dear Nadine Dorries,
I am writing to you with great concern regarding the proposed building of an incinerator in The Marston Vale, capable of burning 600,000 tonnes of house hold waste. As you are well aware The Marston Vale has had more than its fair share of pollution over the years. The brickworks started over 100 years ago and has only just ended. There are two massive landfill sites that will be emitting methane for an undetermined amount of time. The health effects of this I am sure are unknown. Needless to say the landfill sites would be much smaller if Bedfordshire not taken in waste from London. Just as we in The Marston Vale thought we could start to breathe clean air, the sites proposed for a huge incinerator just happen to be the very place that has been polluted for so many years from the brickworks and the landfill sites.
Talking to the Covanta staff I obtained information that the proposed incinerator will take waste from other counties. Why should Bedfordshire have to do this? Bedfordshire has taken in London waste for years. There is no health surveillance proposed indicating that pollution generated is of no concern to Covanta or local government. Background pollution monitoring is to be carried out by Covanta and not an independent organisation. There will be a significant increase in heavy good vehicles transporting waste from other areas. The loss in equity in peoples houses when this project is given the go ahead is again of no concern to Covanta. I am not sure that people realise that they will loose a significant amount of equity in their houses if this project goes ahead. Out of fifteen proposed sites for the incinerator around Bedfordshire, eleven were in The Marston Vale. The geology of The Marston Vale is an amphitheatre which means that pollution generated will accumulate in certain weather conditions. This happened with regularity with the pollution from the brickwork chimneys.
Nadine you said at the meeting in Marston Moretaine for the proposed Eco town, that the general public have the choice whether they wanted the town or not under a Conservative government. You haven’t given us the same choice over the incinerator. I believe you said it was because council tax will increase. Please give us the choice whether we want to pay more in council tax. There are alternatives and I am sure that you know of them. Yes, they will cost more but they are the future. Incinerators are past technology, hazardous to health and will contribute significantly to global warming.
If this project goes ahead it will be another punch in the face for The Marston Vale and unfortunately it will be a knockout from which it will never recover.
Yours Sincerely
Jeff Joynson
Local Resident
CC Marston Moretaine action group
I suggest that those concerned about the adverse health effects of incineration should contact Dr Dick van Steenis who has had major input into the following five incinerators which have been stopped so far in 2009:
Capel, Surrey [quashed in High Court]
St Dennis, Cornwall [stopped March 2009, but no appeal pending]
Invergordon, Scotland [stopped 18 August 2009]
Dunbar, Scotland [stopped after Invergordon]
Essington. Staffs [stopped June or July 2009]
Both the Surrey Mirror and the Dorking Advertiser printed articles on 22 May 2008 in which they reported the failure of the Health Protection Agency to examine any relevant health or mortality data at electoral ward level around any incinerator.
More info on incinerators at http://www.ukhr.org where you can see Heallth Protection Agency’s letter to me dated 8 June 2009 admitting above.
In January 2008, both above papers printed maps of mine showing high infant mortality wards downwind of incinerators at Coventry, Edmonton and Kirklees and low infant death rates in the upwind wards.
The STIG website in Cornwall has articles about my incinerator/infant mortality research from Harrow Observer of 3 May 2007 and South London Press of 4 May 2007. There’s also the following Sunday Express article of 27 April 2007 which was printed a few days after the Enfield Advertiser’s 3-page article “THE BABY KILLER?” which had headline splashed across picture of Edmonton incinerator on front page.
The Express On Sunday: Incinerator fumes link to hundreds of infant deaths
Express on Sunday, The (London, England) – Sunday, April 29, 2007
Author: Lucy Johnston and Martyn Halle
HUNDREDS of baby deaths a year are being linked to pollution emitted by public w aste incinerators . Researchers have established a significantly higher death rate among children up to one year old when they live under smoke from an incinerator chimney. There is a lower death rate for children who live out of the path of incinerator emissions. The report comes after a detailed analysis of death rates across the country. Dr Dick van Steenis, a retired GP who helped head the study, said: “The incinerators are burning all sorts of material from domestic waste to hazardous chemical and radioactive waste. “The danger comes from the particles released into the atmosphere. They are of a size that can be easily inhaled into the lung where they lodge and cause damage to the body.” The most damaging particle, known as PM 2.5, is particularly harmful to youngsters he said. “Newborn babies are more likely to succumb to damage from chemical pollutants in these inhaled particles.” He added: “Around every single incinerator , infant mortality rates, asthma rates and autism rates are sky-high. “That’s if you live under the smoke stream from the chimney. In areas nearby which don’t get the smoke, the death rate is either at the national average or lower.” The data has been collected from the latest official statistics covering the years 2003 to 2005. Enfield in north London has the UK’s largest incinerator at Edmonton. The death rate for babies up one year old in west of the borough is virtually nil. But in eastern Enfield, which sits downwind of the incinerator and is exposed to smoke from the chimney, the death rate is between 10 and 12 per thousand of population. The national average death rate for babies up to a year is 5.2 per thousand. Dr van Steenis said that he had accounted for other factors that could increase the death rate such as social deprivation. He pointed out, for example, that “leafy middle-class areas” of west London were affected by emissions from a big incinerator at Colnbrook near Slough. In some parts around this plant infant mortality rates are treble the national average. “We compared those areas with nearby well-to-do wards that didn’t get emissions and they were significantly lower than the national average.” Professor Vyvyan Howard, an expert on environmental pollution from the University of Ulster, said dioxins released in the burning of rubbish had been shown to be cancer causing. He said that while incinerator filters take out 99 per cent of particles, it is the ultra fine one per cent – the PM 2.5s – that can have chronic effects on health. London Waste, which owns the Edmonton incinerator , said it had not seen the van Steenis report. A spokesman said: “We use a proven technology with a track record of safe operation and it is recognised throughout Europe as a safe and efficient method of energy generation. “There is no consistent evidence that our facilities cause adverse health effects. “We continually monitor particulates such as PM 2.5s and the levels released are lower than the maximum permitted.”
You can e-mail me via ukhr.org and Dr Dick van Steenis’ contact details are on Country Doctor website at bottom of home page.
Kind regards,
Michael Ryan,
Shrewsbury