Waste Panel Part One (AM)

At the meeting of today’s Waste Panel, we were presented with a report entitled Residual Waste Treatment Options from the consultants Fichtner. It looked at three sorts of alternatives to incineration and came up with the conclusion that a single incinerator in Mid Cornwall was the best solution.

I cannot say that I was happy with the conclusions or the content of the report and we spent the best part of two hours picking holes in the document. Costs of the different technologies were addressed but this was not based on detailed figures, I fundamentally disagreed with their interpretation of planning policy and so much more.

Two interested parties had critiqued the report and came up with dozens and dozens of concerns about the content and the assumptions behind many of their conclusions.

It was suggested that we somewhat uncritically note the report. I was not happy with this and moved an amendment that we “note the work carried out thus far, but agree that further scrutiny of the conclusions be carried out, in particular, in relation to costings, the various criteria used, issues raised at the meeting, as well as concerns raised by third parties.”

The amendment was carried by 8 votes to four.