'Incineration is the answer to our prayers' (From Witney Gazette)

'Incineration is the answer to our prayers'

8:00am Saturday 8th April 2006 in Witney By Giles Sheldrick

INCINERATORS would only be built in Oxfordshire if they were safe and able to produce electricity.

That is the view of Oxfordshire County Council as time runs out to find new methods of disposing of the county's waste most of which is dumped at landfill.

This summer, behind schedule, the authority will start consulting on alternatives to burying waste at landfill, alternatives that have to be in place by 2009.

As yet, none has been chosen.

Enviros, the environmental consultants working for the county council, is drawing up a shortlist, likely to include mechanical biological treatment (MBT) where waste is composted, and methane gas produces electricity and incineration.

But concern has been raised at the speed at which the consultation is progressing.

"Some people seem to think we can recycle and compost everything, but we can't, and there is no money in it."

Terry Joslin

Even though a draft timetable, seen by the Witney Gazette, stated the county council would make a decision on how to collect and dispose of waste between 2010 and 2035 by the end of next month, it still does not know how it will consult.

A statement from county council spokesman, Paul Smith, said: "Whatever the county council chooses will have to be environmentally safe.

"There is no question of building incinerators that do not produce electricity, nor building to unsafe standards of earlier years.

"In 2009, any part of the country that does not meet its Government target for preventing waste going to landfill will be heavily fined. The council could be paying fines of £150 a tonne, which could mean a total fine of £4.35m for taxpayers to bear in 2009, and this is likely to increase year on year after this."

Oxfordshire has one of the best recycling rates in the country, recycling about 33 per cent of household waste.

Labour county councillor Terry Joslin, a member of the authority's waste scrutiny review panel, said: "In my view, there is no alternative incineration is the answer to our prayers.

"We have the benefit of getting rid of our waste, the benefit of an income, and the benefit of selling power why should we feel guilty?

"Some people seem to think we can recycle and compost everything, but we can't, and there is no money in it.

"The dioxin problem no longer exists, and that has been the only reason in the past to objecting to incinerators there are more dioxins in a garden bonfire or firework display."

In Oxford's twin city of Genoble, France, an incinerator burns waste to produce heat for about a third of the population.

Tory county councillor Roger Belson, cabinet member for sustainable development, said: "We and our colleagues at authorities across the country know full well recycling alone will not meet our landfill diversion obligations.

"We are a public authority, and not a pressure group we have a responsibility to look at every option available."

Andrew Wood, of Oxford Friends of the Earth, added: "The most environmental option is not to burn our rubbish, it's to reduce waste and meet recycling rates in continental European countries, which are 60 per cent or better."