- It will not be the site - that has been decided;
- it will not be the winning bidder - that will have been decided too;
- it will not be the process to be used -that will have been decided
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| Insp J Hawkes |
Residents of East Leeds say NO to both proposed waste incinerators
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Waste Management and the PACT meeting
Last night in a truly bizarre twist Waste Management, in the the form of Andrew Lingham turned up at the neighbourhood policing meeting held at the Richmond Hill Community Centre completely out of the blue. The subject of the proposed incinerator then took up almost the entire first hour of the two hour meeting though it had absolutely nothing to do with local policing.
We get the impression that Andrew thinks there is personal animosity between protest groups like ours and himself so let us assure him here and now that this is in no way true. NO2Incinerator knows quite well that Andrew is only doing the job he is employed to do the best way he can and we, at least, respect the fact that he is willing to come to meetings and fight his corner unlike others in his department.
I suspect that we are never going to agree on the incinerator but Andrew did tell us that the final decision on the winning bid will be announced around November and that the planning application will go in early next year.
He also confirmed that the decision to build an incinerator and to build it here was taken some years ago and that none of the "consultations" had any effect on that process. There will be further "consultations" when the winning bidder is announced but on what are we to be consulted?
Several concerns were raised regarding this project amongst them traffic pollution from lorry movements in and out of the chosen site, Insp Jackie Hawkes said it would be no worse than the old car boot generated once a week, the audience were less than convinced by that argument. We also raised the matter of the falling waste stream, pointing out that Leeds had managed a 40% recycling rate for two months running even with little publicity and no city wide food collections yet started however this was dismissed by Andrew who seemed to imply that the figures were misleading. He did agree that in the future there was likely to be less waste to process but maintained that there would be enough to keep an incinerator going without importing waste though he did mention that this incinerator would be processing some commercial waste which we had not previously been told. We vigorously challenged this assertion and pointed out that in just 10 years Sheffield have gone from not importing waste for their incinerator to wanting to import 50,000 tonnes of waste to keep its going because of a diminishing waste stream despite the assurances they gave at the time. There is no way that over the 25 year lifetime of this contract Waste Management could guarantee that they would not have to do the same, they simply do not have a crystal ball.
Concerns about the inclusion of Veolia in the bidding process, given their involvement in human rights violations as cited by the United Nations, was raised but Andrew was understandably not able to say much about that, neither could he address the issue of the PFI funding for this project despite the very well documented problems with multiple PFI projects around the country, it is simply not his area of expertise.
All in all it was a very strange meeting, we are sure that had it been widely known in advance that this matter was to be discussed last night many more interested people would have been there, certainly more people came to the last Richmond Hill Forum especially to discuss this very matter when Waste Management did not turn up (due apparently to some confusion) and we hope that Waste Management will turn up to the next Richmond Hill Forum meeting on Monday 5 September 2011 at St Phillip's Church Hall Osmondthorpe Lane, Leeds when we will again try to put our points of view across - because the people in this area matter, their concerns and worries are just as valid as those in more affluent areas and we will not be brushed aside easily. We will fight tooth and nail for the future of our community and our children which we believe the incinerator will put in serious jeopardy.
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Well you can be sure of one thing - Andrew Lingham will have put that meeting on his timesheet as comunity consultation.
ReplyDeleteSarah C
It was weird of Waste Management to come to a police meeting. There are no policing issues surrounding the project that I know of but coming to this meeting did mean that a lot of people who are interested in the Incinerator project were not present.
ReplyDeleteThe location of the meeting at the community centre also means that a lot of people from East End Park and Osmondthorpe are unable to attend as it is very very difficult to get to the centre from these areas unless you walk or have private transport as there is no direct bus service so the elderly in particular are practically excluded.
A surprise meeting about the incinerator?
ReplyDeleteWas it advertised as such?
I have to say, this is completely unacceptable, as a lot of people, including myself would have liked to be there!!
What sort of service is this? The incinerator was advertised in the agenda for the last forum meeting but no officers turned out!!
I think they need to explain themselves...
It was because they didnt show at the last forum Inspector Hawkes offered them a slot at the PACT meeting.
ReplyDeleteThat Lingham chap was looking distinctly depressed though, perhaps even he knows incineration of waste is wrong - come on Andrew let it all out you will feel better if you do. (and you might sleep better at night as well).
It shouldn't have been a surprise that Andrew Lingham and Waste Management turned up as Jackie Hawkes said very clearly at the last Richmond Hill Community Forum that she would be inviting them to the PACT meeting - or weren't you listening at that point? It's a pity you weren't as you could have got more people along!
ReplyDeleteGiven the snide and totally uncalled for comment at the end of the previous post I thought that I would point out that though many of us at the Forum were indeed listening and did hear Jackie Hawkes offer to invite Waste Management to the next PACT meeting we had no very great confidence that this would actually happen, given that their appearance at the Forum had been widely advertised and much ancipated but did not materialise and that no apology or explanation was offered at that meeting for their none appearance.
ReplyDeleteThe PACT meetings are for discussing local community and policing issues and not Waste Management as it was this subject took up half of the meeting time causing the rest of the meeting to be necessarily cut back.
Current waste management system needs to be evolved according to the new emerging challenges. With more and more electronic waste now in the households we definitely need a new strategy to handle such challenges.
ReplyDeleteI agree and what was once problem waste now has the potential to be valuable reclaimed resource which are becoming ever more rare.
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteWhena are the next meetings? 10th august + 7th September?
David