incinerator will seriously damage local environmnet, says CPRE (Status: press release)

FOLLOWING the news recently that County Councillors have agreed to push ahead with plans for a waste incinerator in Ardley, near Bicester, the Oxfordshire Branch of the environmental campaign group, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), has expressed concerns that the incinerator will seriously damage the local environment and have major impacts on the local transport network.

CPRE has stated that it understands that the related planning application is due to be determined by the County Council later this autumn.

CPRE?s Bicester District Chairman, Bruce Tremayne said: “Our objection to the proposal rests on two areas of particular interest to our aim of protecting rural Oxfordshire: firstly, the building itself, with a stack 82 metres high, brings an industrial feel to what is essentially a very rural landscape. The impact on the surrounding countryside will be marked. Secondly, we query the scale of the project. The implications of operating a scheme of this size on the dependent existing transport system are clearly onerous, possibly fatal.”

He continued: “Not only does the raw waste have to be brought in, all on existing roads, but 75,000 MTPA of bottom ash needs to be sent out, and a further 12,000MTPA of toxic fly ash removed for specialised disposal elsewhere (possibly Gloucestershire). This could mean over 500 lorry movements per day or approx 125,000 movements per year. This may be feasible where there are routes available with adequate capacity, but the B430 carries more than its fair share of HGVs, and is already overloaded. A comprehensive survey is required of the traffic, plus the overall air quality and CO2 emissions, impact on all roads in the vicinity that will be involved in the operations associated with this plant.”

He added: “While we are unable to comment on the health and environmental pollution aspects of the proposal, we understand that the technology proposed is not exactly ?state of the art?, and that later developments such as mechanical biological treatment together with plasma gasification should perhaps be researched more deeply before any firm decisions to proceed are made.

“It may be that some form of incineration of the final level of the waste hierarchy is required. However, it would seem sensible to keep such units small in scale to minimise the visual impact on the landscape; minimise the lorry miles needed to feed them, and so minimise the additional CO2 emissions involved.”