Thursday, 10 March 2011

Incinerator decision now due on 16th April


It seems that we are edging ever nearer to a decision on proposed incinerator at St Dennis. It has just been confirmed that the Planning Inspector’s report from the Public Inquiry has been submitted to the Secretary of State, though we have not been informed what he is recommending.

Some months back, it was announced that Mr Pickles would announce his decision on or before the 2nd June 2011. But today, we have heard that the target date for the Secretary of State is now 16th April.

Also this week, I attended the latest meeting of the Waste Advisory Panel at County Hall. On the agenda was the Council’s preliminary work on its Waste Needs Assessment – basically, its estimate of the amount of waste that is likely to be generated in the future.

You will remember that the former County Council proposed that the incinerator would deal with Cornwall’s domestic waste and would have an annual through-put of 240,000 tonnes.

I am heartened that the early drafts of this work on the Needs Assessment has confirmed one of the key arguments that we made at the Public Inquiry – namely, that a 240,000 tonne incinerator would be massively over-sized.

The early findings of their report suggested that, if we achieved Government recycling targets, the whole of Cornwall would only generate enough residual waste to fill around 60% of the monster.

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