Incinerator Planning Application January 16, 2008
Posted by Philip in : Resource Group News , trackbackViridor have now lodged their planning application for an ‘energy from waste’ incinerator at Oxwellmains. They are proposing that this should take all municipal and a large amount of commercial waste from Edinburgh, the Lothians, the Borders and beyond. This completely goes against our philosophy of seeking local solutions and of working for a zero waste community and won’t even make efficient use of the energy in the waste.
You have until the middle of March to lodge an objection. To find out how to do this and for more information, please visit the IRATE website
Please do this now! Thank you.
Comments»
I have just read the reply by Virador, published in the Berwickshire News 17th January, to some of the initial points raised by the local community and I find myself a little confused opn a number of issues. I will raise only one point here.
I refer to point 5 in which Virador say that “concerns about increased road traffic are misplaced”, and then go on to say that “a substantial proportion of the waste to be processed (estimated at 150,000-180,000 tonnes) will travel to the site by rail” (this is out of an initial start-up figure estimated by Viridor at 300,000 tonnes). Viridor then go on to say that this “could mean over 50% of materials arriving by train”.
My question is this;
Does this statement by Viridor not also suggest, if not categorically state, that a “substantial proportion of the waste” which could also be over 50% (after all the word could is open to all sorts of misuse) will not be arriving at the site by train, it will be arriving by road.
Using Virido’s estimated figures - which in themselves could be open to question - and doing some conservative calculations (I am no expert but I believe common sense goes a long way) I come up with the following:
150,000 tonnes
Each wagon carries 20 tonnes (estimated)
This means 7,500 wagons a year
15,000 journeys (each wagon has to go back)
each journey being 35miles (estimated - on the low side)
a total of 525,000 miles.
Over 1/2 million miles each year.
My confusion arises when Viridor suggest that concerns about increased traffic are misplaced.