WESTBURY protesters, the WGAG/No Westbury Incinerator group, have expressed anger over Wiltshire Council’s failure to improve air quality in the town over the past 20 years.
As reported in White Horse News last week, it is now 20 years since Wiltshire Council declared Westbury as an Air Quality Management Area (AQMA), with Westbury town councillor, Mike Sutton saying, “During the past 20 years the actions undertaken by Wiltshire Council to improve air quality within Westbury have been exactly zero – they have not felt able to improve air quality at all. There’s been plenty of rhetoric but no action.”
In response, Dan Gmaj from WGAG/No Westbury Incinerator group said, “20 years on, the Westbury AQMA is hardly even worth the minimal paper it’s written on. It desperately needs a major injection of balanced, accurate content to reflect the true picture required to manage and keep safe the air that we breathe in Wiltshire. “The potential risk of death from pollutants like nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is now proven in law. This became common understanding after the case and tragic death of nine-year-old, Ella Kissi-Debrah back in 2013, as she was the first person in the country to have air pollution listed as the cause of death.” Wiltshire Council declared Westbury as a AQMA two decades ago in November 2001 for exceeding annual average nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels due to air pollution from high volumes of traffic in Warminster Road and Haynes Road. The declaration should mean that further monitoring has to be undertaken and a plan has to be put in place to improve the air quality.
The WGAG/No Westbury Incinerator group say that if the building of Westbury’s planned energy from waste incinerator goes ahead, which was given planning permission by Wilt- shire Council in June, such a facility will exacerbate Westbury’s air pollution both with emissions from the plant itself and from extra HGV lorry trips to supply the plant.
Dan Gmaj said, “Ashley O’Neill, of Wiltshire Council, states that ‘The emission standards relating to any future permit for the proposed incinerator were built into the air quality assessment which accompanied the amended planning application’ – but fails to genuinely recognise the known dangers associated with the combination of gas emission and particulate material from increased ‘heavy road traffic’ and the varied particulate output from the incinerator, if built.
“Records from already ‘functioning incinerators’ across the UK, prove that poor operating conditions and ‘varied feed stock’ not only create massive spikes in noxious emissions when issues occur, but also ramp up previously agreed throughput, as ‘mission creep’ is waived through. “Simply put, what they agree today based on conveniently inaccurate information, will grow into a larger and even uglier reality in time.
“We will not allow this to happen again. The democratic process alone has been proved to be flawed and deeply pre-determined in nature. From the meeting in June 2021, claims about ‘limited Impact’ and protection offered by the Environment Agency are just empty words.
“There can be no faith in the ability of Wiltshire Unitary Council to ‘have a grip’ on Westbury and the surrounding area’s AQMA as they have proved already this year by rejecting even the thought of supporting the Governmental Private Members Bill on Environment & Ecology, stating that they have it all under control!
“We would love this to be the case, but the truth is that they simply don’t! They act instead, in the interests of their corporate partners in the waste industry.
“Recent ‘burnt offerings’ to resurrect a bypass for Westbury speak only to serving the HGV traffic and mountainous industrial waste feedstock supply associated with the proposed incinerator and sadly, the future consumer traffic and inevitable waste resulting down the line from a pro- posed new mega-sorting plant.
“Anyone who believes that this is progress for Westbury will soon realise that although some local employment and useful infrastructure may be a result, it is primarily not being un- dertaken for our benefit and will ultimately have a cost measured in the lives of our community, unless all is managed responsibly and with public health in mind.
“So, whatever else is sneakily being pushed through in our area while democracy has been combusted and scattered to road dust, our #CommunityPower is adamant that there must be #NoWestburyIncinerator!”
