Council 'no' for incinerator plan

Belfast City Council met on Tuesday night

Belfast City Council has decided not to allow a waste incinerator to be built on land it owns at the north foreshore of Belfast Lough.

The council met on Tuesday night to discuss the issue.

It did, however, give the go-ahead for a mechanical and biological treatment plant to be built on the site.

Arc 21, a group of councils in the east of NI, wanted the council to accept its proposal so the facility could be built by 2016.

The incinerator would have been Energy from Waste (EfW) plant which Arc 21 said could have provided power for 40,000 homes.

A public consultation exercise had been carried out by the council, in which the majority of respondents backed the incinerator plan.

However councillors rejected it.

North Belfast DUP councillor Ian Crozier said the consultation showed that people who lived close to the proposed site of the incinerator were against it.

"The vast majority of respondents from the Shore Road were against the incinerator.

"For the past 40 years the people of the Shore Road have had every manner of disgusting process in their back yard - every piece of domestic rubbish from greater Belfast, animal processing, sewage processing.

"It's someone else's turn to shoulder the environmental burden."

Alliance councillor Tom Eakin who was in favour of the plan said an opportunity had been lost.

"This was was a state-of-the-art Energy from Waste plant that we were recommending - everyone would have benefited from it.

"What we have managed to do is set back the process of us controlling our waste

"The city council would also have received quite a few million pounds from selling of the land."

The decision leaves councils in Northern Ireland with a dilemma as EU rules mean they need to drastically reduce the amount of rubbish going into landfill or face fines.

Some environmentalists have argued that more recycling is needed instead of burning rubbish.