Stop the
Next Wednesday, 11 March,
If they say yes, it will burn waste from across south
Show your opposition
We were at the Nye Bevan statue on
Join the peaceful demonstration before the planning committee meeting. Meet at 1.30 pm on Wednesday 11 March at the front entrance of City Hall i
Make sure your councillors know how you feel.
For more information go to www.foecardiff.c
o.uk
Incinerator query delay blamed on ‘admin error’
Mar 7 2009 by David James, South Wales Echo
CARDIFF council has been criticised for failing to disclose the extent of its dealings with a controversial incinerator firm.
Coun Martin Holland has called for Viridor’s application to build a massive waste-burning plant in Cardiff to be put on hold until the city council reveals the full details of its dealings with the company behind the application.
Viridor’s plan to build a 350,000-tonne-a-year incinerator in Splott is set to be decided by the city’s planning committee on Wednesday next week.
Protesters took to the streets of the city centre yesterday dressed in gas masks and bearing placards to raise awareness of the application, which is opposed by environmental groups including Friends of the Earth Cymru.
Coun Holland, who represents Splott, has been waiting four months for a response to his demand under the Freedom of Information Act.
He said: “I have not had a single response to any of the requests. A basic democratic right has just simply been ignored. I have asked the council’s chief executive to defer the planning application.
“The lack of a response has meant we could not make a fully meaningful and informed contribution to the planning process.”
A spokesman for the city council said last night that the lack of response had been an administrative error and that officers would try to rectify it as soon as possible.
Cardiff council has always denied having any links to Viridor, whose application is supported by Cardiff City directors Paul Guy and Mike Hall.
At a recent city council meeting, chief executive Byron Davies took the unusual step of responding to a petition presented by Coun Holland against the plan and reiterated the city’s position that Viridor’s application had nothing to do with the local authority.
Yet opponents believe the council has already decided that incineration is its preferred technology for dealing with the city’s waste in future and want all details of the council’s dealings with the firm made public.
Coun Holland highlighted the fact that the papers prepared for the city council’s planning committee by officers only referred to the word “incineration” in responses from outside bodies.
He said: “In the first 20 pages the incinerator is not mentioned.
“These are not papers presented by Viridor but by council officials. All that is mentioned is energy from waste.
“The council may say they have nothing to do with Viridor plans, but this is a massive project and there’s no way it could have come this far without some kind of tacit support.”
One of the key objections of the community is that the plant would see hundreds of lorries trundling through Cardiff delivering 1,000 tonnes of waste to the facility every day.
A Cardiff Council spokesman said: “We apologise for the delay in the response to this Freedom of Information request.
“It seems to be a genuine possibility that this request has been lost.
“We will be working to rectify this situation as soon as possible.”
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