Waste debate dominates Bristol elections

Rodney Berman Lib Dems /Plaid going for a mass burn incinerator in Cardiff should learn from this and so should New Labour minister Jane Davidson.. and the Lab/plaid WAG.

Waste debate dominates Bristol elections letsrecycle.com

Liberal Democrats vowed to prevent the creation of a "mass burn incinerator" and have made the same pledge ahead of this week's elections.

AND the result...Labour lost eight of its 10 contested seats in Bristol to cede overall control to the Liberal Democrats for the first time; their councillors were largely swept away ...

How green are the Liberal Democrats?

Full story here Wednesday 03 June 2009 Councils News

The two political parties battling for control of Bristol city council in tomorrow's (June 4) local elections have attacked each other's stance on the possibility of an energy-from-waste plant being developed in Avonmouth, on the outskirts of the city.

I don't think people realise that there is no money now for investment in the waste technologies for Bristol

In the lead up to the election, the Labour Party has accused the Liberal Democrats of "throwing away" the council's chance of receiving PFI funding for any new waste treatment technology by blocking plans for the incinerator.

However, the Liberal Democrats, which is the majority party in the hung-council, has reaffirmed its anti-incineration stance and claimed that the city's recycling rate had dropped by 3% under the Labour Party.

Councillor Gary Hopkins, environment leader for the Bristol Liberal Democrats, told letsrecycle.com: "We have said quite clearly that there will be no incinerator and there are a number of other options available to us and given the clear indication that we intend to increase the recycling rate to 50% by next year."

"And, we have got a leaflet with our results on that, which was 12% under Labour then rose to 39% in the 18 months we were in charge and then fell to 36% when Labour came back in in May 2007," he added.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats took control of the council again in March 2009 when the Labour-led majority stepped aside owing to an ongoing dispute about the possibility of developing an incinerator in Avonmouth under a joint PFI bid with two other councils (see letsrecycle.com story).

Immediately after assuming power and by virtue of being the largest single party in the council, the Liberal Democrats vowed to prevent the creation of a "mass burn incinerator" and have made the same pledge ahead of this week's elections.

In the election, the Liberal Democrats, who need four seats to gain a majority in the council for the first time, will be defending 11 seats, the Labour Party 10 and the Conservatives two.

The potential development of an incinerator in the area has been a contentious issue since it was used as a reference technology in the council's October 2008 bid for £80 million in PFI funding as part of the West of England Partnership - alongside Bath & North East Somerset council and South Gloucestershire council.

Labour

Waste collections in Bristol are currently being disrupted by industrial action by workers for the city's waste management contractor SITA UK

However, Labour has criticised the Liberal Democrats position with regards to the development of new technology and claimed that it could see the council tied to the use of landfill for an extended period by "throwing away the PFI deal".

Prospective Labour parliamentary candidate for Bristol West, Paul Smith, who is also chief executive of the Furniture Re-use Network (FRN), said: "The West of England Partnership was going for PFI credits and the Bristol Lib Dems have taken the council out of that process, which means there won't be investment in new waste management technologies."

"We are going to have to find the money from the council's own resources in terms of the capital investment needs," he added.

Mr Smith told letsrecycle.com that the Labour executive member for environment at Bristol council, Mark Bradshaw, was even opposed to mass burn incineration and actually favoured mechanical biological treatment.

"I don't think people realise that there is no money now for investment in the waste technologies for Bristol and I don't think people realise that we have got a dependence on landfill, which has a financial impact," he added.

Strike

Debate between the competing parties comes against the backdrop of striking refuse workers in Bristol and, according to local media reports, mounting piles of refuse in the city.

Related links

• Bristol city council
  
• West of England Partnership

The strike, which is being carried out by staff employed by the council's refuse collection contractor SITA UK over pay, is said to have affected refuse collections across 35,000 households in the Bristol area and has also led to the suspension of food waste collections.

The strikes began on Friday May 22 and a third day's strike took place on Friday May 29. Union Unite said that they would continue to strike every subsequent Monday and Friday until SITA management increased its pay offer to higher than the proposed 2.75% raise.

Rodney Berman hot under the collar!

Dear Ms

I thank you for your latest e-mail. However, I have answered many of these points before and you repeatedly ignore the explanations you are given and repeatedly distort what I say. You also repeat allegations over and over again that I have previously refuted.

On that basis, could you please explain why it is that you look forward to my reply?

Yours sincerely,

Rodney Berman

Leader Cardiff council

Yes Rodney

I would have thought that pointing out these NEW serious flaws, described below, would be appreciated and you would address these extremely serious points now that you are aware of them. Your officers have not brought these matters to your attention! You have not addressed these points as yet. Friends of the earth and the green party will continue to ask these very questions and deserve an answer. In addition we will be asking how the Environmental Assessment on the air quality affects of the incinerator was done.

I had hoped you might respond with an open mind.

There are HUGE serious flaws in project ‘green’ and the Viridor planning application in skipping due process. The Viridor site has not been a llocated for waste management purposes in the Development Plan. If allocated in the future LDP, it would be subject to stronger tests, potentially through the public examination process, and to a soundness test

How can you ignore the development plan?

The Cardiff LDP itself is still awaited so has not allocated sites, has not been subject to consultation and would still have to go through public examination. The proper process is for Viridor to argue for this site through the LDP. To grant planning permission would allow them to skip due process and so unfair to both the public and to promoters of alternative residual waste treatments. It should therefore be turned down on grounds of prematurity.

It is clearly an important function of the planning process to determine whether allocations for waste treatment facilities meet the test of ‘Best Practicable Environmental Option’ (BPEO) at a strategic level.

The applicant has not undertaken an SA/BPEO appraisal of the proposal and, because the Authority did not recognise that it was their responsibility to do so. There is, therefore, no support for the allocation being BPEO as required by National Policy. The National Waste Strategy, “Wise about Waste” specifies the minimising of landfill and incineration.

The Viridor proposal amounts to a huge expansion of incineration, both for municipal waste and for industrial waste, instead of the alternatives that exist for both categories. Viridor make a case for 170 000tpa of residual MSW arising in the sub-region. We have shown that even Prosiect Gwyrdd’s assumption brought up to date would give 140 000tpa. Viridor make no case for the 170 000tpa of commercial or industrial waste. Their incinerator would therefore tout for business and encourage incineration rather than waste recovery – preferred in the waste strategy as well as by the basic waste hierarchy (mandated by the Waste Framework Directive…….).

On waste growth, the figures show that municipal waste is stagnant or falling in Wales as well as England. It’s your officers who have to justify projected20increases (as they supported in the Regional Waste Plan), and learn lessons on waste reduction.

They have overlooked the dangerous fact that the process produces vast quantities of Ash which in landfill20produces toxic dust and leachate. A Ministerial answer last week in the Commons specified that incinerator ash has to be tested for being hazardous waste – no mention of that in the project greenwah report or the planning application.

And of course there is a big question to of the propriety of the officers fixing with Viridor a site visit to their incinerator still under construction. No one was informed - that Colnbrook is Viridor's incinerator and not yet operating!!! So what point is there in visiting that? And what opportunities for the public to join that visit?

best wishes

and still hoping for a reply

Rodney Berman on Scam Green

Anne to R Berman Leader of Cardiff Council

Green New Deal - not in Cardiff

Nick Clegg will lay out plans to divert the Government's planned economic stimulus to environmentally friendly projects. He will argue that Britain must invest in environmentally friendly projects to ensure the country pulls out of the looming recession on the road towards a low-carbon economy. Independent 15th Dec 2008

REPLY

Thank you for your comments. However, you appear to be conveniently ignoring the fact that Cardiff has become the first city in the UK to provide a free weekly collection of food waste for every street. You also appear to have overlooked the fact that we have also created a significant number of new jobs in recent years in the provision of both the new food waste collections and the previous expansion of green bag recycling collections. These include increased numbers of waste collection staff and new staff at our recycling plant in Lamby Way, one of the largest local authority-run recycling plants in Europe.

For the record, Viridor is a private company and neither Cardiff Council nor the Liberal Democrats are responsible for the fact they have recently submitted a planning application for an Energy from Waste plant.

The intention of Prosiect Gwyrdd, should it progress to a procurement process, is not to rule in or out any technology for residual waste treatment. The five local authorities who have joined together to take Prosiect Gwyrdd forward are committed to ensuring that there is the full opportunity for a range of solutions to come forward during procurement. Any proposal that comes forward would have to be assessed for its viability, but one of the factors that will also be taken into account will be its carbon footprint, expressed as global warming potential in units of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents. All of this was explained in the recent report considered by Cardiff's Executive at its meeting on 4 December.

Yours sincerely,

Rodney Berman

Leader of Cardiff Council

Rodney Berman - What incinerator plans?

Thanks Cllr Berman but you are being rather pedantic! Not funny!! Shouldn't the people of Cardiff be fully informed and consulted now before you spend £1,085,000 having consultants just looking in to it ? I can tell you for free that it is a very bad idea!

Work is at an early stage? Is it Rodney?

When will plans or applications be made to the council for a "energy from waste plant" or to you and me - an incinerator be made to Cardiff council? How do you explain this? Opportunity for Cardiff to lead the way in waste and resource management June 2007....." By recovering energy from household waste, the new facility would provide a substantial amount of electricity to the city."

Energy from waste = a waste of energy. Plastics and paper are the main source of calorific value in an incinerator. Burning plastics, which are oil based,
is effectively burning fossil fuels – the main factor behind global warming. Paper is produced from wood by an energy intensive process. Burning it
wastes energy and resources as well as generating pollution.

How to comply with the landfill directive without incineration Greenpeace Scientific Journal

EXECUTIVE BUSINESS MEETING: 5 JULY 2007 MUNICIPAL RESIDUAL WASTE TREATMENT

REPORT OF CORPORATE DIRECTOR AGENDA ITEM: 8 PORTFOLIO: ENVIRONMENT & TRANSPORT - Reasons for this Report
1. To seek authority for the Council to:-
(i) work collaboratively with up to four other South East Wales Local authorities to develop the Outline Business case and carry out all other pre-procurement preparatory work for the proposed joint procurement of a residual waste treatment facility (Prosiect Gwyrdd),
which is in line with the Council’s Municipal Waste Management Strategy; and

9. The strategy clearly identified a need for a residual waste treatment facility in order for the targets to be met and for punitive landfill tax and infraction penalties to be avoided. ...The emphasis on residual waste treatment – and energy from waste in particular – was given renewed emphasis in the Secretary of State for the Environment’s Waste Strategy for England announced on 24 May 2007.

25. Meanwhile, officers have jointly been exploring the following preprocurement
works: project scope, procurement partnering structure, market appetite, key assumptions, and initial affordability models for each authority, site availability and project timescale.

(Approval to join Prosiect Gwyrdd and undertake pre Procurement work required to procure a residual waste treatment - Indicative date July 2007
Completion of detailed outline business case and other prep procurement work – Dec 2007 )

35. The proposed procurement is based on a notional 300-400,000 tonnes of residual waste- per annum when fully developed, responding to the current requirements of the partnership and the contribution to landfill diversion in the context of the region and the rest of Wales. However, changes in law/policy on a European or national level could have a significant impact on any proposed procurement in progress. Increased levels of recycling would reduce the amount of residual waste. (how does this promote recycling?)

The existing stated policy of the Welsh Assembly Government is:-
......· The overall level of energy from municipal waste in 2013 should not exceed an overall figure of 25%. What legal status this proviso enjoys and precisely what it means (e.g. is it 25 % for each authority or the whole of Wales?) is unclear.

I think we all should be in on this at an early stage. After all this outline buiness case and pre procurement stage is expensive as your council document indicates

"for Whilst this preserves flexibility for each authority, it should be appreciated that the costs of the
procurement exercise is likely to be considerable and if the rights are
exercised to abort the process/not to award a contract, then such
expenditure will prove abortive;"

Programme Manager with
Office £100,000 per year for 3 years

Specialist Advice:Legal, Financial, Technical accommodation £185,000 first year and £600,000 for next 2 years = £1,085,000

EXECUTIVE BUSINESS MEETING: 5 JULY 2007 MUNICIPAL RESIDUAL WASTE TREATMENT "Cardiff Council being authorised to enter into contracts for the appointment of external consultants to advise on Prosiect Gwyrdd (within approved funding levels and subject to agreeing the apportionment of costs between the authorities);"