The proposal to build an incinerator on my doorstep at Westbury by NREL/Hills has prompted me to take a closer look at what might happen. Listening as best I could to NREL/Hills virtual public consultation I was unable to satisfy my fears for the future of Westbury as I have a hearing impairment and could not hear them clearly.
So, I wrote to them and asked if I could meet them at their current site at Westbury to ask some questions about their proposals. “We are unable to meet with you due to government guidelines on Covid, if you want further information visit our website” was their reply. I feel that there is a certain amount of discrimination there, not only against me, but other disadvantaged people who would like more information about their proposed planning application.
Last night I jumped in the car and drove to their plant, passing the new Spinnaker housing development at the bottom of Station Hill, a real credit to the developers. Good landscaping and use of the old mine hole. I hadn’t been to this part of Westbury since I moved back here recently, after living and growing up in the town, so it was a bit of a shock to see the enormous changes to Brook Lane.
First stop was the cathedral-like Arla Milk factory, with its towering silos and pipes, all painted in bright white and visible for miles. How many gallons of milk do they process I wonder? Many millions I suspect. So where is this existing recycling plant of Hills? Well if you can’t see it from where I sat in the car you could certainly smell it. Phew what a stink. I read on their website that the process was kept under ‘negative pressure’ so the fumes cannot escape, well they certainly got that wrong last night.
The high security fencing with CCTV cameras greeted me on arrival to the recycling plant, Keep Out and No Smoking. There were three 40-ton articulated trucks parked up for the night opposite. The one with smoke coming from the partially open passenger window was from Lithuania, probably the driver cooking his evening meal or having a cigarette or two before picking up plastic wrapped waste from the plant, being exported to Europe for burning in energy from waste incinerators. The other two were from South Wales waiting to collect waste from what was to appear up the hill and around the corner from the Hills plant.
Lo and behold it’s another eyesore, Network Rail’s trackside recycling centre. You name it it’s in there; sleepers, rail plates, rails, anything to do with waste trackside equipment brought in from the railway sidings and shipped out by truck. More HGVs. This is an enormous site with trucks waiting to pick up items. I can’t believe this is the Old Brook Lane that I knew as a boy.
I drive on and suddenly, another fence appears, protecting a yard full of blue and white cuboid plastic drums. Hundreds of them and in the distance a pair of 30ft high stacks for discharging whatever is connected to them into the atmosphere. Welcome to Waste Matters Limited, a company recycling waste including (according to their website) waste engine oil, batteries, chemicals and solvents, among other things.
From my vantage point I can see and smell all four giant plants; milk, household waste, railway waste and chemicals, whilst the old Brook Farm nestles under the towering structures peeping up from the surrounding grass land. Right in the middle of this vista would be the proposed giant 243,000 tonnes a year incinerator, to deal with even more of Wiltshire and surrounding area’s commercial and household waste.
So, we have a mixture of a milk dairy, hazardous chemicals, a Mechanical Biological Treatment Plant (MBT) and a railway waste site. At the epicentre would be the new proposed incinerator to complement this unmitigated mess, running at internal temperatures in excess of 800 degrees.
It’s not the operators’ fault that this has come about. Waste is increasing day by day and we are trying to employ our best technologies to process the stuff. Except Hills, who after pursuing and being granted permission for the best possible technology (Gasification) is now proposing a Victorian technology to burn our waste. A big backward step for the safety of our world. Gross CO2 outputs from an incinerator are enormous (Hills are reluctant to tell me and advise me to wait until they put in the application or publish it on their website); estimates vary but it could be in the region of 1 tonne for every 1 tonne of waste.
The solution is not simple, we all produce too much waste especially plastic. The solution is to be found by putting pressure on manufacturers to limit or stop its use in food and goods wrapping.
How can we stop this creeping waste disposal disease from expanding yet again, encroaching on our town? The proposal is only three quarters of a mile from the new Spinnaker housing development. In fact you can see the half built roofs from the existing MBT plant. I wish there was some simple answer but there is not. There have been around 45 to 50 incinerators built and operating in the UK, probably producing millions of tonnes of CO2, all being released into our atmosphere. New applicants for incinerators will happily say that because this number of incinerators have been built, it must be right. They are wrong, this planet needs help to reduce this gas, not produce more.
Wiltshire councillors hold the power to stop this expanding waste incineration in our town and must surely reason that the edge of Westbury is not the place for it. Common sense must prevail, it is their duty to listen to the residents, not complicated arguments, and manipulated information from applicants.
As an example, Hill’s virtual public consultation quoted; “The project has a net carbon benefit of ~58,000 tonnes per annum”. They have performed various calculations taking into account Carbon Offset, which you need a degree in science and maths to even begin to understand and they have got it down to this figure followed by the clever use of the word Net! The real output could well be closer to 243,000 tonnes gross. When I asked what the CO2 output would be, they were unable to help, referring me to their latest Q and A section of their website and then declared that it was still work in progress. A bit late in the day if the design and plans are about to be submitted to Wiltshire Council? [The plans have since been submitted].
Beware of the people who will say because these incinerators produce electricity this can be offset against the much-hyped Carbon Neutral policy pushed out by this government. Don’t think for a minute that as soon as an incinerator starts to export electricity to the National Grid they shut down or throttle back a power station, I suspect they don’t, they just divert the electricity to other parts of the country.
This Government’s propaganda about demolishing the UK’s last coal fired power station is sheer nonsense. They have simply been replaced by incinerator plants which produce the same amount if not more CO2 than the coal predecessors. They just burn our waste instead of coal. We must stop producing this waste, and certainly stop burning it on the edge of our town.
Burning it in Westbury is not good news.
Burying it is not good news.
We must not bring this upon our town.
Robert Knight,
Westbury
