Westbury Town Council will engage with an air quality technical specialist to help advise on the best ways for the council to monitor air quality in the town, following the approval of the controversial energy-from-waste incinerator earlier this year.
On Monday 26th June the town council’s highways, planning and development committee agreed to commit £1,000 to the council’s incinerator monitoring task and finish group, for them to engage with a technical specialist to advise the group on what pollutants and particulates should be monitored, how this monitoring should take place and with what monitors, and also where the monitors should be best placed in the town in order for the group to monitor air quality now and when the incinerator is built.
The council wants to establish a baseline for air quality in different locations in the town and to use this to compare the air quality during and after construction of the incinerator.
Westbury Mayor, cllr Mike Sutton explained, “The group wants to find the best locations to put an air quality monitor around the town, but as we are not the experts, we need a specialist to advise on the best places in the town to monitor air quality and to explain where the windfall is and what exactly we should be monitoring. I think this will be money well spent as otherwise, we could be monitoring the wrong thing.”
Cllr Russ said, “This data from the air quality monitor could help us to draw a firm baseline for us to monitor the impacts of the incinerator, which could be vital in the future. I think it’s crucial that the money is well spent.”
Cllr Gordon King added, “I think engaging with a specialist to find out exactly where we should place the air quality monitor is the right idea as it is beyond our skillset. What we should be monitoring however is clearly expressed in the technical reports of the applicant and is available online, so we shouldn’t be wasting money on that in particular.
“We should get technical advice on what type of monitor we should use, as not all monitors measure the same thing in the same way and we need one that will pick up on the more dangerous heavy metals and poisons that we know will come out of that chimney.”
Cllr Philip Harcourt said, “In January of this year, the latest version of the environmental regulations came into force, which changed some of the things that the Environment Agency must look for, that they didn’t have to look for when they previously granted the licence for the incinerator.”
The town council will spend up to £1,000 on this, with the money coming from the council’s allocated legal funds, which sits at around £35,000.
