THE WGAG/No Westbury Incinerator campaign group is continuing its fight to stop the incinerator saying incinerators are a ‘curse’ to local communities.
The group is urging local people to contact their local Wiltshire councillor to oppose the controversial plans. It has serious concerns over the proximity of the proposed incinerator to the town and safety issues over operation of the plant.
In response to recent NREL statements, they have sent in the following response:
What will councillors vote when they decide on the fate of the plans for an incinerator in Westbury? Do they know what you think? Do they know you want them to vote NO?
Two of the Wiltshire councillors who will decide the decision live in Westbury, one in Upton Scudamore and the others across the county.
Sixteen town and parish councils in their wards voted AGAINST the incinerator application. It is time the councillors do the same when they vote at the strategic planning committee. They must vote as a representative of the thousands who have objected.
What are the grounds that councillors can use to vote for refusal?
• They can use Wiltshire Council planning policies, national planning policy and legislation. These include core policies 42, 54 and 55. Councillors can quote Waste Regulations 2011 and Town & Country ( EIA) Regulations 2011.
Councillors are in their job to know about this kind of thing. You, the local population, has got to tell them to act.
Wrong weather, unique place:
• They can question the evidence and methods used by NREL/Hills to put their case.
For the last five years every incinerator planning application made by Northacre Renewable Energy Limited has used weather data from Lyneham, over 20 miles away. Why have Wiltshire Council accepted this?
The steep escarpment around Westbury where the White Horse lies affects weather conditions. New residents to the town will not know that there was a huge cement works that spewed out emissions over the town for forty years. The chimney was 122 metres high – emissions still fell over the town. The White Horse will tell you!
Because of the unique location of Westbury below the escarpment, temperature inversions occur and plumes do not disperse. The emissions did not drift away happily in the wind. Legislation may be in place but it doesn’t cover the worst most damaging bits – the very small particulates. They will pump out into the atmosphere.
Wiltshire Council knows this. The present Wiltshire Council Director of Public Health was a member of the department when Maggie Rae, Director of Public Health, was concerned about the health of Westbury residents and was liaising with local GPs over the emissions from the cement works more than twenty years ago.
Cursed with an incinerator
• Wiltshire Council have declared a Climate & Ecological Emergency. Global warming – CO2.
The incinerator alone would produce more CO2 than ALL the solar farms in the county.
The pay off for local people will be asking them to change their way of life to accommodate so great an amount of CO2 coming from one incinerator.
Shlomo Dowen, from UK Without Incineration says ‘ …if a locality is cursed with an incinerator, then that locality has to do without something else in order to pay for the carbon burden. Will local people be restricted in terms of how often they are able to use their cars or how often they can go on holiday? The question becomes what are local people prepared to do without to accommodate the emissions from an incinerator?’
Bottom ash, fly ash and explosions
• In October 2019 there was a huge explosion at a waste disposal plant near an airport in Austria – at least five people were injured. In 2017 a waste container carrying untreated incinerator bottom ash on a shipping vessel in Plymouth exploded.
30% of the waste burnt in the proposed incinerator will remain as bottom ash. The other kind of ash produced would be fly ash, which is highly toxic. Over 9,000 tonnes of hazardous fly ash ( what is scraped out of the filters and chimney) will have to be transported off site.
Why worry?
• Because over 80% of the waste that would feed the incinerator is commercial and industrial waste – mixed residual waste.
The incinerator is a merchant venture – a private business. The council has a 25 year contract with Hills to supply household waste – less than 20% of what would be burnt.
Write to your county councillor and your MP again. Tell the media about the curse of incinerators.
Council and MP opposition
• Westbury Town Council and local MP, Dr Andrew Murrison, have also objected to the plan; see the front page and centre pages of the last issue of White Horse News for their comments in full.
The issue can be found via the Back Issues link on our website: www.whitehorsenews.co.uk
