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Ministers announced on the 15th June 2006 that the Belvedere plant proposed by waste firm Cory Environmental for the London borough of Bexley will go ahead. The plant is designed to process an average of 585,000 tonnes of municipal waste each year over a 30-year period. The maximum amount of waste that can be processed in any one year under the agreed planning conditions will be 670,000 tonnes. As well as processing waste produced by households in the Western Riverside Waste Authority area of central London, the plant will generate 72MW of electricity. The controversial proposal has taken over 15 years to achieve a planning decision, including two major public inquiries. The proposal has been opposed by local activist groups and the local council in Bexley. A major reason for the decision to allow the proposal is thought to be Cory’s intention to use the River Thames to ship municipal waste to the plant from central London – keeping potentially thousands of lorries off London’s congested roads.
John Austin said: “It is outrageous and perverse that the Minister can make an announcement to approve the largest waste incinerator in the country in the middle of a so-called consultation on its Waste Strategy. Waste to Energy-only incinerators that do not include heat recovery are inefficient and environmentally unfriendly. They produce more green-house gas emissions than gas fired electricity generation and as we become more successful in recycling they will be burning higher concentrations of nasty things which will generate more fossil-fuel derived CO2 emissions than coal fired power stations.”
“The decision flies in the face of the government’s own guidelines on proximity – that is that waste should be dealt with close to its source and it is madness for him to suggest that this development in south east London ‘represents a nearest appropriate installation under the proximity principle’ when it is planned to burn waste from the other side of London – from Kensington & Chelsea, Westminster and Wandsworth. If the government is going down the incineration road, a nearest appropriate installation would have been in Battersea but the posh people of Wandsworth didn’t want it on their doorstep but it’s OK to ship all their rubbish to the poorer working class communities of south east London.”
“So the Minister’s decision is in conflict with his own government guidance, is in conflict with the democratically elected Mayor of London’s waste strategy, is opposed by the democratically elected local planning authority, Bexley Council. The Minister has put two fingers up to democracy and two fingers up to the environment.”
Bexley Council is “devastated” by the decision of the Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, to approve an application for a waste-to-energy incinerator at Norman Road, Belvedere after so much anger about the proposal from local people.
“I am angry with this outrageous decision. It is devastating and bitterly disappointing for the many people who have campaigned with us against the scheme since the original public inquiry in 1992. The Government has let us all down. It is a typical Government fiasco,” says Cllr Ian Clement, the Leader of Bexley Council.
Cllr Clement says the Council will continue to work to safeguard the interests of the people of Bexley: “We will be looking at the Minister’s decision very carefully to ensure it meets all legal and policy requirements. We will be studying every move the developers make. If they don’t comply with the Minister’s requirements we will be down on them like a ton of bricks.”
“The Company may have convinced the Minister, but it still has a massive task to win over the local community, and we will not be taken for granted”, adds Cllr Clement.
Every member of Bexley Council’s Cabinet has signed a local petition opposing the Government’s decision to give the go-ahead to a massive waste-to-energy incinerator at Norman Road, Belvedere.
The Cabinet members signed the petition following their first public meeting on Wednesday 21st June and restated their determination to fight to protect the interests of local residents.”We have instructed our Officers to study the Minister’s decision very carefully to see if there is any further action we can take to halt the scheme,” says Council Leader, Cllr Ian Clement. “We will argue for as long as is needed that this is ‘the wrong scheme, in the wrong place, at the wrong time’.”I’m reminded of how Winston Churchill would have fought for our residents. We will fight all the way to the bitter end to protect our borough and our people.”The Cabinet is also calling on people who oppose the scheme to sign a petition launched by Cllr David Leaf, one of the ward councillors for the Belvedere ward.The petition reads, “We the undersigned object to the decision made by Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks on 15 June 2006 to grant permission for the Waste Power Station to be built in Belvedere.”You can complete the petition online by following a link from the Council’s website. Free access to the website and other internet sites is available at all the borough’s libraries.
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