Vision: The Sita incinerator on the Isle of Man, which the company wants to replicate on the shores of the Severn (Picture: Andy Radcliffe)
Green campaigners are urging people to send objections to the planned waste incinerator planned for on the shores of the Severn near Bristol.
Ricky Knight, the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Bristol West, said the plant proposed by SITA was an “environmental disaster”.
The party candidates for the city have come together to call on concerned residents to write to the Environment Agency voicing their objections by next Friday (March 12).
SITA UK Ltd has applied to the Environment Agency for a permit to allow them to operate a mass waste incineration facility, which it says would generate enough power for 50,000 homes by burning material that would otherwise go into landfill sites, and could be up and running by 2013.
The £100million plant would process up to 400,000 tonnes of non-recycled waste but this, Mr Knight said, would encourage councils to recycle less waste.
“We should be producing much less waste and recycling more, not burning rubbish and releasing harmful gases into the atmosphere,” he said.
“Waste incineration encourages councils not to bother with recycling or reducing waste. This is not the message we should be sending out.”
The Greens say that burning rubbish encourages more waste, is inefficient in producing energy, wastes resources, produces pollution and still creates toxic ash which needs to be disposed of.
“We have to wake up to our wasteful society and reduce what we throw away,” added Alex Dunn, Green candidate in Bristol North West.
SITA UK planning and property manager Gary Phillips told the Evening Post last year that people had nothing to worry about.
“This would be quite different from the incinerator at Kings Weston lane. It’s not just there to burn waste, it’s there to have an end product, heat and power.”
The people of Bristol should look at what the communities of Guernsey and St. Dennis in Cornwall have had to go through.
You entertain Sita UK and you dance with the Devil and you are likely to get burned and probably sued, if they can't have it all their own way!!
You might want to avail yourself of how they work, look at http://www.gdfsuez.eu.com
Regards
Rob
Cyberspace
The area where this mass incineration of waste is proposed already has poor air quality! We should not being adding yet more – there are already serious, pollution-related health issues in the area. The Severn Estuary is also supposed to be a protected site, rich in wildlife – especially birds – and would suffer ill-effects if mass incineration is allowed.
Sita will love this post as Dr Dick van Steenis and I have helped scupper their incinerator proposals at St Dennis (Cornwall), Capel (Surrey), Granville (Telford) and Guernsey.
The Surrey Mirror and the Dorking Advertiser newspapers both printed electoral ward maps showing infant death rates higher in the downwind wards than the upwind wards around Sita's incinerators at Coventry, Edmonton and Kirklees.
It's not just incinerators that emit harmful PM2.5 air pollution and yet the Environment Agency are failing to regulate effectively as I alleged in this statement:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506…
I bet Sita were chuffed that Dr Dick van Steenis wasn't involved in the Binn Farm incinerator proposal. He did help get the incinerators at Invergordon, Dunbar and Peterhead stopped.
I hope FoE activists and Charterede Civil Engineers are reading this blog.
Kind regards,
Michael Ryan BSc, C Eng, MICE
Shrewsbury
I forgot to mention that the UK medical profession have been aware of the link between infant deaths and air pollution from combustion for more than sixty years as seen from this sentence from a well-known medical reference book:
"As a general rule it (i.e. infant mortality) is lowest in agricultural districts, higher in thickly populated mining and manufacturing regions, and highest in large towns where textile industries are carried on and where female labour is largely employed."
(Black’s Medical Dictionary, 1944 edition, page 471)
Those who want more recent reference, take a look at this sentence which starts the conclusion of a Japanese study of infant deaths around 63 incinerators:
"Our study shows a peak-decline in risk with distance from the municipal solid waste incinerators for infant deaths and infant deaths with all congenital malformations combined."
J Epidemiol. 2004 May;14(3):83-93.
Risk of adverse reproductive outcomes associated with proximity to municipal solid waste incinerators with high dioxin emission levels in Japan.
Tango T, Fujita T, Tanihata T, Minowa M, Doi Y, Kato N, Kunikane S, Uchiyama I, Tanaka M, Uehata T.
Department of Technology Assessment and Biostatistics, National Institute of Public Health, Wako, Saitama, Japan.
——————–
Here's a typical electoral ward map showing the aggegated infant death rates around three incinerators in West Yorkshire (2004-2008 ONS data):
http://ukhr.org/incineration/kirkleesarea.pdf
And here's article and "infant mortality" map in Saginaw where winds are mainly from the west – hence high infant death rates on eastern side of map. The two major polluting sources aren't shown on his map:
http://www.mlive.com/living/saginaw/index.ssf/200…
The Health Protection Agency haven't bothered to check relevant data around any incinerator as admitted by their CEO in this letter to me:
http://www.ukhr.org/incineration/justinmccracken8…
Take a look at Western Daily Press of 6 August 2003 as in it the HPA promised to check health data around incinerators, landfill sites etc ("Chemical danger testing") when Dr Pat Troop was CEO
Western Daily Press: Chemical danger testing
Western Daily Press (Bristol, England) – August 6, 2003
Length: 213 words (Estimated printed pages: 2)
THE potential dangers of chemicals and poisons, such as those from landfill sites and incinerators, are to come under intense scrutiny, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) announced yesterday. Working with the NHS, the HPA will investigate suspicious clusters of disease which could be linked to chemical exposure. The pledge was made as the fledgling agency, which began work in April, launched its five-year plan setting out its aims and objectives across a raft of health protection..
I hope Ricky Knight and Alex Dunn contact Darren Johnson AM and ask for a copy of the written question he put to Mayor Boris Johnson requesting an electoral ward map of London showing the 2002-2008 infant mortality rates.
I have such a map and it clearly shows the association between exposure to incinerator emissions and electoral wards with high infant death rates, eg Upper Edmonton (close to a well-known incinerator) had a rate of 10.4 per 1,000 live births and is the highest infant death rate in Enfield Borough (see "THE BABY KILLER?", Enfield Advertiser, 25 April 2007, pages 1, 2 & 3)
Less well-known is the incinerator at St Mark's Hospital, Northwick Park, which is in "Northwick Park" ward (London Borough of Brent) and has the 2nd-highest infant death rate in London at 12.4 per 1,000 live births.
Most people have heard of SELCHP, but few will know that the infant death rates in the Boroughs of Lewisham, Newham and Tower Hamlets all rose after SELCHP started. Coincidence?
If you look at London electoral ward map, there's a swather of high infant death wards stretching across NE London along line of SW wind from SELCHP which has wards with lesser infant death rates either side.
Sidcup hospital has incinerator (White Rose) and Sidcup ward has the highest infant death rate in Bexley Borough.
All above data is aggregated for the seven-year period 2002-2008.
Southwark Borough, sandwiched between two incinerators (SELCHP and Kings College Hospital incinerator) has the highest infant death rate in London at 7.0 per 1,000 liove births.
Kingston upon Thames had the lowest 2008 infant death rate at 0.9 per 1,000 live births and is free of incinerator emissions.
More info at http://www.ukhr.org
Kind regards,
Michael Ryan,
Shrewsbury