Incinerator power plan thrown out

Plans for a waste incinerator capable of powering up to 30,000 homes have been thrown out by Cardiff planners.

The proposed plant on a former copper, iron and steel works would have seen 250 lorries per day delivering 350,000 tonnes of waste a year to the site.

The planning committee decided the proposal would result in "the unsustainable transportation of waste".

Meanwhile, a waste recycling company has been granted permission to build a plant on the edge of Cardiff.

Sterecycle said it will invest up to £50m in the new plant at Wentloog, which will create 60 jobs.

The company said the plant will begin operations in spring 2011, and that it will provide a clean alternative to incineration.

It said it will have the capacity to process around 200,000 tonnes a year of unsorted "black bag" household or commercial waste, equivalent to rubbish thrown annually into landfills by 400,000 people, and is expected to handle waste from councils in south Wales.

The Wentloog plant will be the first of five new plants to be built and operated by Sterecycle as part of a £200m expansion over four years.

Duncan Grierson, Sterecycle's chief executive, said: "Our technology offers a clean alternative to the landfilling or incineration of waste.

Incinerator

Campaigners opposed to the incinerator development near Cardiff's centre claimed that the scheme would create pollution and traffic problems.

Environment Agency Wales held a meeting last month for people to discuss worries.

Somerset-based firm Viridor Waste Management was behind the application for the energy-from-waste (EfW) proposal on the former NEG glassworks site off Glass Avenue, south of Ocean Way, known as Trident Park.

The firm said the facility was needed to meet the move away from landfill as the main way of managing waste both by the European Union and the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG).

Planners refused the application saying that to operate at its design capacity, without compromising the recycling targets set by the assembly government, the proposal would need to import substantial quantities of residual waste material from outside the council boundary.

It would also need to export a substantial quantity of hazardous fly ash waste for disposal at a site in England.

A report to the planning committee meeting last month said the Lamby Way landfill site, the sole point of waste disposal in Cardiff for 20 years, is due to close later this year.

RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Cardiff County Council
Sterecycle
Viridor Waste
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