From Andrew Murrison, MP
At least 1,500 objections could be recorded opposing the controversial Westbury incinerator planning application.
Now, South West Wiltshire MP Dr Andrew Murrison has joined 428 individuals and organisations who submitted comments to planning authority Wiltshire Council on the proposed Westbury incinerator by the closing date yeterday, September 22.
“I can’t remember the last time a planning application had so many people formally submitting objections. I hope the planners take note and throw this appalling proposal out,” he said.
He has also written to the council to make his views known and his strong objections to the proposed Northacre incinerator plan.
Wiltshire Council declared a climate emergency in February, 2019, and Dr Murrison said he hoped the application for an old style incinerator including a new Westbury smoke stack would be judged against the environmental commitments the council had given.
Northacre Renewable Energy was permitted to install a gasification plant at Westbury last year stating that it was a greener alternative to other energy from waste technologies.
Dr Murrison said: The proposed switch to old style incineration is a financial expedient. It is based on a reliable, preferably increasing, stream of waste being trucked in from across the sub-region. It should be recognised that strategies higher up the waste hierarchy that would be far more useful in achieving the council’s target for carbon neutrality – reduce, reuse, recycle – threaten incinerator viability since they reduce feedstock. Operators will be keen to ensure their incinerator business model is not threatened.”
He pointed out that incineration was recognised as more polluting than gasification, producing more greenhouse gases and particles potentially harmful to health. The incineration residue, bottom ash, was a toxic, leachable burden on landfill.
“Northacre is unable to deny that its application to replace gasification with incineration would be a retrograde step in respect of key parameter – the threat to health, nuisance to the public and damage to the environment.
“The application envisages processing more waste than the gasification plant for which NRE already has permission. This will mean more lorries blighting a part of Westbury that is already an Air Quality Management Area and that has limited prospects for a remediating bypass in the foreseeable future. Had there been a western bypass, the calculus may have been different.
“As it is, and as the growing number of incinerators planned in the UK compete for waste, it seems likely that feedstock will be sourced from further afield and arrive in lorries that are less than full, resulting in far more traffic along the A350 than NRE cites in its submission. The difficulty of remediating the AQMA without a bypass is acknowledged but Wiltshire Council must do nothing to make it worse, including green-lighting a switch from gasification to old style incineration.
“NRE submitted its application for an Environmental Permit to the Environment Agency on August 20 in accordance with the suggestion led by the late Cllr Jerry Wickham to assist the council in its deliberations. The applicant presumably intends that the council should have the EA’s analysis before it makes its planning decision, which is welcome. Therefore, in my view, the council should defer its determination until the EA has finished its work, a position that presumably will be met with no objection by the applicant.”