Air quality to be monitored across town before the incinerator is built

AIR quality across Westbury will soon be monitored to establish a baseline before the construction of the controversial waste incinerator on the Northacre Industrial Estate at the edge of the town. 

The collected data will be used to monitor potential changes in air quality caused by the building and operation of the incineration plant. Westbury Town Council agreed to spend £6,150 for the installation, delivery and ongoing monitoring of four air pollution sensors and one met station to be installed in selected sites around the town as advised by the air quality consultant, at a meeting of the town council on Monday 8th January. The monitors will be detecting nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter PM2.5.

The cost of the air pollution monitoring equipment will come from the town council’s legal fund, which now sits at £35,909.

Cllr Mark Bailey, who is chair of the incinerator monitoring group said, “We have been looking at ways to police the incinerator going forward and obviously one of the main concerns is the impact of air quality. In order to get useful and accurate documentation and statistics, we need to install these devices and we need to do it sooner rather than later, so that we can establish a background reading before any works take place and we have taken professional advice on locations and the type of monitoring equipment that would best suit our needs.

“These monitors will be continually feeding back information so that we will have a full record of air quality in the town from the moment that it is set up. Once a background level of information is established, we can use that going forward to look at any changes resulting from the incinerator and we will be engaging with professional expertise to look at this information, as we don’t have that expertise on the council.”

Cllr Matthew Dean suggested that the town council should go back to Wiltshire Council to ensure that the developer of the incinerator, Northacre Renewable Energy Ltd (NREL), pays for the air quality monitoring equipment and that it forms part of the planning conditions.

In response, cllr Michael Amos said, “I wouldn’t trust any data about air quality that has been sourced by the developer – having an independent data set is important. In terms of the accessibility of that data, we should be looking at making it available on the Westbury Town Council website or social media, so that people in Westbury can also effectively self-monitor as well and bring any changes to our attention.”

Cllr Gordon King added, “It is absolutely right that we start collecting this data now and not wait for either the incinerator to be finalised and/or construction to start and production to begin, as we need to see the changes it makes to our area. If we asked NREL to pay, we would be unlikely to get the money to purchase the air monitoring equipment before it is built. People want to see what the true impacts of the incinerator will be.

“We should also share this information widely, not just on our website, but to the officers at Wiltshire Council and also to a learned climate school such as the Exeter University, so they can start building up a data bank of their own, to provide us with learned thought about what the outcomes are.”

Cllr Philip Harcourt, “We did seek advice and consider the monitoring of smell but the advice given is that it is such a complex issue and smell is a very subjective matter that it is simply not viable to monitor smell to any degree.”