Cardiff, Caerphilly, Newport,
Monmouthshire, Vof G Councils want a big burner which Ties them into a very expensive PFI for 25 YEARS to burn waste rather than improve recycling rates. The Prosiect Gwyrdd councils are striving towards a feeble 65% recycling by 2025 with at least a further 5% being ASH from the incinerator. Many other councils have already exceeded 70% recyling rates.
“Prosiect Gwyrdd” = Scam Green = WAG Welsh Waste Policy = incinerators
On the subject of the incineration debate taking place in your newspaper, in 1959 Dr Friedrich Hoffman, a chemical warfare specialist and chief of the United States Army Chemical Corps’ Agents Research Branch at the Edgewood Arsenal, was sent to Europe to scout for potential chemical warfare agents.
In his trip report, Dr Hoffman noted that he had received “startling information” about the toxicity of dioxin, including the fact that it had been linked to severe and sometimes fatal liver damage.
Dr Hoffman reportedly told the army that dioxin was too deadly to be used for chemical warfare purposes.
Dioxin is perhaps best known as a contaminate of the herbicide Agent Orange, used in the Vietnam War to kill foliage. It is a recognised carcinogen, causing cancer in every species ever tested.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency believes it is responsible for 100 cancer deaths every day in the US. It causes Vitamin K deficiency in babies, disrupts the immune system, mimics hormone function, and interrupts the thyroid, which in turn causes developmental and neurological problems in children.
It has been calculated that up to 8,000 cancer cases will result in Belgium due to the dioxin food contamination that took place there in 1999. Now, in the UK we are building roads and houses with it and spreading it on our vegetable patches.
To date the Welsh Assembly has spent over £3m on Prosiect Gwyrdd, years have been spent by executive and scrutiny panels.
No inquiry has been carried out to determine the safety of public health from incineration fallout, only a “position statement”, underpins the millions of pounds and thousands of hours spent by officials.
With incineration, the only thing being disposed of is the truth.
Will it save money building a massive incinerator?
No, it may end up costing us a fortune and tied in to a contract councils can’t get out of.
Viridor cannot build their costly giant incinerator unless they get a long-term (25 yr) contract from Cardiff and the other Councils, who would then not try to meet their recycling and residual waste targets. This has already happened to some English Councils, who find their predecessors signed contracts for more waste than is now being produced, so send their recycling collections too or pay a penalty. Having an incinerator would actually prevent increasing recycling and composting rates at a later date.
FACTS
giant incinerator 350 000t/yr, over-sized even for the 5 Scam Gwyrdd councils
domestic waste is decreasing with more recycling,
residual waste to reduce to 130 000 tons/yr for the5-authority region
other waste facilities in other Council areas could and should come much sooner
Viridor said half their waste for burning would be industrial/commercial – but it’s not needed as their recycling is increasing fast (avoiding the high incineration costs).
Can we use the heat from the Viridor incinerator?
There can only be a WASTE of heat! There are no realistic uses for the immense 70 MW heat, year-round with no back-up supply in the event of breakdown and maintenance down-time. No evidence that Viridor has any real plans to lay costly pipes needed to actually supply any of the heat at all. Against WAG policy
Is the Viridor incinerator efficient?
It is so Very inefficient – it is called waste ‘disposal’ under European standard
Whoops and what about the DANGEROUS EMISSIONS?
What do we do with the 17,500 tonnes of hazardous toxic ash? They expect to send it to England at great cost to dumps with huge local opposition.
The production of poisonous dioxins
An incinerator of this sort has toxic emissions, particularly ultrafine particles (nanoparticles)
How many lorries will be driving through Cardiff every Day to deliver this rubbish to Viridor in Splott?
Could be up to
260 BIG DIRTY RUBBISH LORRIES
every day
Adding to congestion
And what is the carbon footprint of all this? Send the answer...
Subject:Viridor's proposed incinerator in Cardiff Bay
The proposal
ViridorWaste Management are poised to submit a planning application for a large “energy from waste” incinerator plant in Cardiff Bay. According to their Community Consulation Brief the proposed plant will be situated on Trident Park, between Ocean Way and the Docks and designed to process 350,000 tonnes of waste per year.
Our concerns
lOver-sized – 2.5 times the amount of residual waste Cardiff produces
In 2007/2008, the total amount of residual waste from Cardiff was 133,000 tonnes[1]; the total from five local authorities[2] in the region is still less than 330,000tonnes[3]. With rates of recycling set to increase this leaves the question of where the shortfall would come from. Viridor imply that the household waste could be topped up using business waste but incinerators can't cope with too high a proportion of business waste[4]. This means the waste would have to be either diverted from recycling or sourced from further afield still which is against the proximity principle.
lTransport – more than 100 trucks per day on Cardiff's roads
In order to meet the demands of the incinerator, over 1000tonnes of waste per day would have to be transported to the site - this could result in over 100 trucks per day having to be accommodated on Cardiff's roads. This amount of traffic would have a significant impact on congestion and result in a corresponding increase in pollution from the vehicles.
lToxic waste – 120,00 tonnes of waste ash per year
Every year the incineration process would produce about 17,500tonnes of toxic fly ash[5] which would have to be transported to a hazardous waste site in Cheltenham; and around 100,000tonnes of bottom ash[6] which contains leachable metals. Although theoretically the bottom ash can be recycled as secondary aggregate, only half the current production of bottom ash finds a market, meaning the rest would need to be landfilled.
lEmissions – NOx, ultrafine particles, dioxins
Incineration not only releases high levels of CO2 but also NOx and ultrafine particles. In addition, emissions are not limited during start-up and close-down when high levels of dioxins have been found to be emitted.
Alternatives
lIncinerators are a very inefficient way of recovering energy from waste ~20% electrical efficiency. Other residual waste treatments such as anaerobic digestion generate energy more efficiently and the greatest energy efficiency of all would be achieved by maximising recycling.
lDue to the long waste contracts associated with incinerators, they are very inflexible. Modular and flexible alternatives are available –able to adapt to changing volumes and composition of waste as recycling improves and increases. These include Mechanical & Biological Treatment (MBT), Anarobic Digestion, Autoclaving, Gasification and Pyrolysis.
[4]http://www.ukwin.org.uk/?p=117in Sheffield, too much business waste caused a Veolia plant operational inefficiencies and they had to resort to sourcing household residual waste from further afield
Kevin Lawlor, project manager at College Proteins, arrives at the Newgrange Hotel where the inquiry was adjourned after five acres on the proposed site turned out to be owned by a local farmer.
There is no safe level of exposure to fine particulate air pollution, University of Ulster professor, Vyvyan Howard, told the College Proteins oral hearing last week.
The toxicological research academic claimed evidence was emerging that no current incinerator design sufficiently abated dangerous nanoparticles from potential emissions that would emerge from the proposed Nobber plant, and recent European studies pointed to such emissions as a source for between three to six per cent of deaths in larger urban centres.
The lungs and blood/brain barrier had been shown to be the routes these nanoparticles could penetrate, all of them man-made chemicals which human evolution gave our normal defence mechanisms no history of tackling, said the Coleraine professor. There were findings to suggest they caused protein misfolding, making them toxic.
The potential for such defective proteins contributing to the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease was the basis of the EU grant of €2.5 million his group was currently researching, he added.
Article about incinerator in Cardiff. Will new waste plant be ‘iconic landmark’? - WalesOnline 11 Sep 2008 ... A NEW waste incinerator in Cardiff Docks could become an unlikely “iconic landmark”, business leaders involved in the project have claimed.
The latest technique employed by proponents of incineration is to spin the dirty practice with attractive terms that don't reflect reality – in this case, 'waste to energy' facilities. On the surface, generating energy from waste sounds like a great idea, but the truth is that it still burning garbage.
Major issues with these ill-conceived facilities.
The amount of energy required to fuel garbage incinerators is enormous, and they are often net energy losers when the total energy inputs and outputs are compared. Incinerators are an expensive symptom of the problems inherent with our over-consumptive society and are not the answer or even part of an answer to the waste issue. Because incinerators are dependent on an uninterruptible stream "fuel", in the form of garbage, they actually perpetuate further consumption and constitute part of the waste problem. Sadly, much of the waste they burn is made up of recyclable materials and organics that can be reused or composted.
Incineration emissions are toxic and, in the burning process, materials bind and form new rogue compounds that only a chemist could begin to figure out. Also produced by incinerators is a solid toxic ash, which must be disposed of as hazardous waste. The volume of toxic ash produced can be 30-40% as much as the original waste inputs.
The main issue remains; the amount of unnecessary waste our society generates is increasing and this problem cannot be solved merely by finding new ways to bury or burn this waste. Instead, we must attack the root of the issue by demanding stringent waste reduction targets. These authorities must also stop downloading the waste issue onto councils that do not have the legislative power to eliminate importation of waste, unnecessary packaging, disposable products and one-time beverage containers.
Waste incinerators are not waste leaders – they are waste losers.
10 Sep 2008 ... A PUBLIC consultation on a proposed plant that burns waste to create energy has been launched in Cardiff. www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/09/10/public-can-get-close-look-at-incinerator-proposal-91466-21716353/
A LOCAL authority has launched a £54m lawsuit over a troubled waste plant that was once hailed as a model for the whole of the UK. www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics-news/2008/07/12/54m-claim-turns-up-the-heat-over-authority-s-incinerator-91466-21328769/
Residents opposed it on health grounds, claiming there was no truly safe limit for the dioxins emitted by the incinerator. But councils, who point out that ... www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics-news/2008/05/01/council-facing-waste-lawsuit-91466-20844398/
According to the Western Mail the East Moors Steelworks is the second highest emitter of dioxins in Wales and the fifth highest emitter of particulates.
Concerns over public health have been the main driving force behind the Slough Anti-Incinerator Network (SAIN) campaign. The fact is that incinerators do not dispose of waste – they simply change its form, breaking it down into much smaller constituents that are either released into the air as emissions via the chimney-stack, or land-filled as toxic ash from the filter equipment. Amongst the emissions are extremely small PM2.5 particulates (2.5 microns in diameter), which are not yet regulated in this country, as well as larger particles, heavy metals and dioxins.
17-07-2007 Local authorities in Devon have become embroiled in a row over proposals for a new incinerator in Exeter. Councillors in Exeter are meeting today to discuss their concerns that Devon county council's intention to build an energy-from-waste facility on the Marsh Barton Industrial estate, south of the city……............ In denouncing the project, Cllr Connel Boyle, lead councillor for the environment and leisure raised his concerns about dioxin emissions. The city council has claimed that waste incinerators in the UK account for "80% of dioxin emissions in the UK (from regulated emissions)", and therefore needed to be monitored more closel
New FOE report
.......and Professor Dr Paul Connett Ph.D on zero waste here
..............................Right now the landfill surcharge is driving the building of massive incinerators
UK is moving from worst solution to the next worse solution i.e. moving from the bottom of the waste hierarchy up.
What we need are financial incentives to encourage communities to move to the top of the waste hierarchy –i.e. towards sustainability. Perhaps........
INCINERATION 20 pounds/ton surcharge
40 pounds/ton surcharge on ash
LANDFILLING 40 pounds/ton surcharge
The Governent is pushing councils in one direction - incineration
Charles Clover in The Sunday Times derided the government for pushing councils towards incineration as a solution for waste disposal. Previously incineration plants had been opposed because of fears of toxic emissions, an issue now largely dealt with by better burners. Clover said incineration should be opposed: "It starves recycling industries of raw materials and prevents a cheaper, greener business model from succeeding."
UK Health research here Effect on health unknown here Welsh councils' incinerator trend Environment minister Carwyn Jones has said the development of incinerators in Wales is ineitable.24-3-07 AN INCINERATOR close to Swansea's prestigious SA1 development is being investigated for allegedly pumping out too many harmful fumes...Residents...have been told that potentially-cancer-causing dioxin emissions were found to have been three times the limit when tested in December last year. Waste Burning Could Be Lethal (from Oxford Mail) Incinerators - are WMD's? Health Impacts of Incinerators here UK without incineration network here
A report from Friends of the Earth reveals the huge extent of the pollution and financial losses caused by our love of landfill and incinerationmore...
Wales Climate Camp
The Minister depicted Prosiect Gwyrdd as "producing much needed energy" that would "use waste in the best possible way", despite the consortium claiming their Business case for procuring a ‘solution’ for residual waste is technology-neutral
WAG Approval of the business case and subsidy for Prosiect Gwyrdd, 27 Jan. 2009:
New funding boost for next generation energy-from-waste plant in south Wales
Why are incinerator residues not counted in the recycling/composting indicator?hereClassification of Incinerator Bottom Ash (updated 29 Nov. 2008)
Facebook Groups
No Incinerator in Cardiff Bay here
- Councils Scam Gwyrdd
Scottish Parliament: National Waste Strategy
Scottish Parliament vote against large-scale incinerators -The vote in the Scottish Parliament, carried because the Tories voted with the Greens and SNP. Just one Lib-Dem supported, 6 Labour absentees.
If burning up to a quarter of Scotland's municipal waste is "a failure of the imagination" how much bigger a failure is the proposed Welsh strategy with burning up to 37% proposed !
It appears that the governing SNP had a change in mind when confronted with 25% in their Minister's plan.
*S3M-4348.1 Scottish Parliament: National Waste Strategy (11 Jun 2009)
11 Jun 2009 ... Greens win Holyrood Vote against "Landfill in the Sky". Parliament today endorsed Green opposition to plans for a new generation of ... there should be no necessity for any large-scale waste-to-energy plants to be built ...
Newport’s cabinet gave the go ahead to allow an Assembly-owned site on Tatton Road to be considered for the project. The site, in the industrial area of Queensway Meadows, is likely to be the only publicly owned site earmarked for the plant.
