Covanta have today formally given up in their quest to build an incinerator outside Merthyr Tydfil. They cite the local authority’s unwillingness to look on it as a national facility for Wales as the main reason although at the same time as they withdraw from that planning process they have applied to have their permit changed for the Ince Marshes incinerator so it can take in an extra 180,000 tonnes of material a year.

In all this Covanta appear to be working as hard as they can to become the biggest burner of residual waste in not only the country but also the world, thereby shackling the generations of tomorrow to a 19th century solution that does not solve the waste problem but simply turns it into an invisible and deadly cocktail of chemicals.

CHAIN have today issued a Press Release about the hidden health dangers of allowing TATA to build an incinerator in Northwich. Click here to read the press release.

News is emerging that Lanarkshire Council in Scotland have awarded their long term 25 year waste contract to Viridor but it is based on them being able to build the controversial Dovesdale Farm incinerator.  The plan is currently under judicial review and is not going to be decided until October however the council have decided to go ahead and award the contract anyway.  The fact that Viridor may not be able to process the waste, at a plant that may yet be refused planning permission, doesn’t seem to have got in the way of the contract decision.

In a stunning show of Nimbyism, the Council go on to state that “No incineration of South Lanarkshire Council material will take place in South Lanarkshire – it will be treated in Runcorn”.

We’re sure that the poor beleaguered residents of Weston Point and Runcorn will sleep better now that they know that they will be burning waste from Scotland.

Whatever happened to the proximity principle?  Whatever happend to the basic planning rules that dictated that waste should be treated as close to the source as possible?  How can it possibly be in anyone’s interest, apart from the incinerator companies, to transport waste over 200 miles just to burn it? It’s a poor decision that will leave a bitter taste in the mouth of Runcorn residents.

CHAIN has received many requests for comments on the result of the judicial review initiated by Cheshire West and Chester Council and Cheshire East Council into the decision by the Government to withdraw funding for their joint municipal waste management plans. In response, we are releasing the following statement:-

The decision is a serious setback to the plans of TATA and Covanta to build waste incinerators in this area. The reason given by the Government for stopping the PFI funds in October 2010 was that there is already sufficient planned waste treatment capacity in Cheshire to meet EU landfill targets until at least 2020. This has now been supported following a legal challenge. We anticipate that this will be fully taken into account by the Government in the public inquiries currently underway into both waste incinerator proposals. There is also the hope that TATA and Covanta will stop claiming that their monster plants are about avoiding landfill and own up about their real motives which are simply to make huge profits from burning rubbish from other parts of the UK at the expense of the health and well being of our community. Quite simply, their incinerators are not needed and not wanted in Cheshire.

CHAIN have today received a really nice email from the lovely people at Primafilm in Italy highlighting their new video, a trailer for which can be found on You Tube.

They are making what they claim is the worlds largest petition against incineration by inviting people to send them their names to be included on the end credits of the film.  They hope to amass over 50,000 names for these credits, thereby making it not only a potent message against the dangers of incineration but also the longest film credits in the world.

If you would like your name to be included in the credits for this film then all you need to do is send an email with your name directly to the film company and they will do the rest.  To send an email to them just click here.

In the meantime please check out their website and see the video they have produced at sporchidamorire.com

In a quite unbelievable story, it appears that the Danes are planning a new incinerator for Copenhagen which incorporates a ski slope on the outside of the building.  In a recent story in the Guardian the architect Bjarke Ingels winning design is set to replace the current out of town incinerator with a new state of the art facility which will allow visitors to ski down the outside.

Denmark is often hailed by the pro incinerator lobby as being a great example of how modern facilities, sited in urban centres, can blend in with the environment and provide a cheap source of energy with no risk of harm to human health.  The other side of the coin says that not only are they conducting the greatest long term experiment of the age into the effects of living in the shadow of an incinerator with the local population as guinea pigs, they are also now at the point where they are burning refuse that should have been recycled.

Of course the answer will lie in the future where one side or the other will be vindicated, but in the meantime it seems that the designers of this new plant have forgotten why the chimney stacks are build so high in the first place.  The height of the chimney dictates the area over which the particulate matter it emits will disperse, and the reason for this is that no matter how you dress it up the output of the chimney will be toxic.  So if you already know that this output is toxic in concentration, and that the plant will periodically emit higher than permitted concentrations of dioxins, furans and other toxic materials, how clever is it that you should be allowing people to stand up right near the top of the chimney and breathe this stuff in?  From this distance it appears to be nothing short of sheer lunacy but you can’t legislate for this type of behaviour.

In the meantime we need to make sure that whenever we take the fight to Covanta in Middlewich and Tata/Brunner Mond in Northwich we need to consistently remind them that incinerators are not safe.  And by continually pressing the point as to why the chimneys need to be as high as they are planned to be we can expose the fact that if they are any smaller then poisonous particulates could easily concentrate on the ground below.  So whilst we can’t stop the Danes behaving madly, we can prevent that madness spreading to Cheshire.

Once again the Guardian has done a wonderfully balanced job of reporting on the pre Inquiry meeting to be held next Tuesday, yet the entire report seems to avoid using the word Incinerator at all.  The comments underneath the article are probably mor revealing than the reporting itself and you can read the story and comments here.

Let’s be clear, the proposal for this plant is to drop a 600,000 tonne incinerator on the edge of town and let it sit there for the next 40-50 years.  There seems to be clear disregard for the residents of Northwich and any reassurance that is requested is met with standard PR spin which contains a lot of platitudes and little concrete reassurance.  And that is because they cannot offer any reassurance or guarantees. Once you build an Incinerator you are stuck with it – for a lifetime.  If it goes wrong it happens on your doorstep.  If it breaches its emissions those same emissions will be inhaled by you and your family.  If it catches fire (one of the many hazards of an incinerator ironically) it’s on fire next to our houses, schools and community.  If Northwich has one of it’s inversions (a regular occurrence in spring and autumn) then the emissions from the chimney, no matter how high it is, will not disperse and we will all inhale the muck it pours out.

So, if you care about where you live and the health of you and your family, you could do worse than attend the Pre Inquiry meeting at Northwich Victoria Football Club next Tuesday, 26th July and register your protest.

A report today from Wallingford in New Jersey USA states that Covanta has been ordered to pay a $400,000 fine and been forced to upgrade one of it’s incinerators due to an emissions violation last summer.  You can read the original story here.

Disturbingly the plant was forced to close in July 2010 and still remains closed one year on, forcing the operator to truck it’s waste to other plants for incineration.  This scenario is not one that is ever considered as part of the planning application, but were it to happen in Cheshire it would inevitably result in the waste being transported by road all over the county.

In addition the plant was found to be emitting twice its permitted levels of Dioxin yet it still remained in use after this was discovered.  There is no evidence to show how long it had been emitting these dangerous levels of dioxins

CHAIN and other protestors have long campaigned against Incineration as a method of waste disposal as it is inherently dangerous and this is yet another example of why it is essential to adopt a precautionary approach to Incineration.