No sunshine for the new waste incinerator!!!!

Veolia have announced that they are intending to submit a planning application for the waste incinerator at Cross Green on 1st June.


The No2 Incinerator and No Incinerator Leeds groups campaigning against the incinerator have seen the plans and model and had this to say.


The building is massive in size and a massive missed opportunity. The building faces south over 60% of it will be in direct sunlight all day. The waste incinerator is designed to produce electricity and is connected direct into the national grid. But Veolia has missed a crucial opportunity to make money for Leeds. The building could have incorporated hundreds of square metres of solar panels in the design.


Solar panels would generate thousands of pounds of revenue per year for Leeds City Council which could be spent on community projects in the local area or across the city.

They would also help the Council meet its CO2 and climate change reduction targets by producing green electricty. They would also provide jobs for local contractors to install. To cap it all the Council have removed the need to apply for planning permission for solar panels on any new buildings in the Aire Valley Enterprise Zone which is right next door to the Cross Green site.


A spokesperson for NIL said "this building is such a missed opportunity, Veolia should go back to the drawing board"


A spokesperson for NO2 Incinerator said

" We hear constantly of this buildings design being innovative and marking the gateway  to East Leeds. This building will also mark an area of high poverty and deprivation where many people live in fuel poverty. The addition of solar panels would be an extra revenue stream for LCC and in these times of austerity when Inner East Leeds seems to be bearing the brunt of viscous cuts in services we support the call for a revision of the plans for this building" 

NIL is a coalition of Leeds based organisations and local residents who oppose waste incineration as a means to deal with residual waste for the following reasons:







1) It reduces the incentive to Reduce Reuse and Recycle and suppresses local recycling rates.






2) Incineration releases Greenhouse Gases - Incineration involves the release of high levels of CO2, the main climate warming gas.






3) There are better and cheaper alternatives to incinerating waste that are more flexible, quicker to implement and better for the environment.






4) Incineration creates toxic emissions and concentrated hazardous ash which has to go to landfill.






5) Incineration poses significant health risks - Although incinerator fumes pass through expensive filter systems, modern incinerators still emit significant levels of NOx and of ultrafine particles. The latter includes nano-particles which are of great concern because they can pass through the lung lining, causing internal inflammation and penetrating to organs. Incinerators also have emissions unlimited by license, during start-up and close-down, and from ash dispersing during transfer to landfill or construction sites.






6) Incinerators tie councils down to long contracts with ongoing demands on the amount of waste that is needed for the incinerator each year.






7) Incinerators often require hundreds of lorry loads of waste to be transported to the incinerators every week which has a detrimental impact on the local community and air quality.






8) Compared to reuse and recycling incinerators create few jobs and little in the way of additional benefits for other companies in the local economy.






For further information contact






NIL David 0113 230 1799


No2 Sarah  07920784958

If you wish to voice your objections in person do feel free to come along to the Richmond Hill Community Forum  - Monday 11th June 6pm at East Leeds Working Mens Club.  Our ward is now solid labour and we cannot rely on our elected representatives to object to this project on our behalf. We need to demonstrate to them  that this project is unnecessary and unsustanable. Come along and make your voice heard.

An Opportunity to Express Your Views

There have recently been articles in the Yorkshire Evening Post about the Veolia Incinerator to be built at Cross Green.  No2 Incinerator are extremely grateful to the YEP journalists who compose these articles as they have always asked our opinion and we have been quoted accurately in the paper as a result.

We may shortly be given an opportunity to write an article in our own words as to why we oppose the building of such a plant in our area.

No2 Incinerator would like to give a variety of local residents views on the subject.

WOULD YOU PLEASE TAKE A COUPLE OF MINUTES TO EXPRESS BELOW YOUR REASONS FOR OPPOSING THIS PROJECT.

If you prefer not to blog please send your comments to our email address  no2incinerator@gmail.com   and we will ensure we incorporate as many as we can into the finished piece.

VEOLIA COMMUNITY LIAISON GROUP STARTS THIS THURSDAY !!!!!!!!!!!!

Has anybody else received an email from VEOLIA saying that the first Community Liaison Meeting is on THURSDAY 2nd of February?


Even though the email the chair of No2 Incinerator received didn’t have even a the name of the venue in it we have ascertained that the meeting is to be held at

RICHMOND HILL COMMUNITY CENTRE. 7PM THURSDAY 2nd FEBRUARY.

Call us conspiracy theorists – but strangely enough the Inner East Area Committee is on the same evening – starting at 5pm at Civic Hall. So non of our elected councillors will be able to get there on time and neither will No2 Incinerator as we never miss the Inner East as it is vital to keep abreast with what our councillors are deciding on our behalf. Especially as a papers are being presented on health in East Leeds, Policing Priorities (and no doubt cuts) and a very interesting paper written by the area management team about priorities for 2012 - 2013.

If you haven’t received notification of this liaison group meeting and like us thought you had like us signed up for the community consultation – ring them on this freephone number and let them know how you feel.



0800 085 8980

A days notice of a community meeting is insulting – but so is building a huge Incinerator in our ward. Is it a sign of things to come........... not if we all pull together AND COMPLAIN.


Sarah Covell, No2 Incinerator.  

Who's getting rich on your money? A BBC Panorama special!

It was on last Monday, and it was good. Schools without light switches, that had to be illuminated day and night, hospitals having to pay their PFI costs first and provide care for their patients later, projects deemed unsuitable for use but paid anyway, by the taxpayer of course.

Please forgive the NO2incinerator for such blatant advertising! It couldn't be helped: this is essential viewing.

PFI has had its share of critics, and its load of bad press. Even the government, it seems, it's having second thoughts.

 It makes us wonder, how is it that our Leeds City Council has seen or heard none of it.

Missing in Action!

At the recent vote by Leeds City Council to confirm the building of a PFI funded municipal incinerator on the site of the old Wholesale Market at Cross Green the Labour Councillors for Burmantofts & Richmond Hill and Temple Newsam went missing in action!  The 4 councillors representing the 2 most affected wards left the council chamber in advance of the vote and did not return until after the vote had been taken, this cynical action was totally unacceptable and a clear dereliction of their duty to their constituents.  They may not have been able to alter the result of the debate but they should have had the courage of their convictions and their their manifestos.

These councillors had campaigned against the incinerator vociferously whilst in opposition and to a large extent had been elected because of their clearly expressed opposition to the project in this area and in failing to reflect the express wishes of their constituents have failed in their duty to their own electorate in a way that would, in any other walk of life, be a resigning matter but resigning on principle is no longer a concept understood by politicians of any party it seems.

NO₂Incinerator has worked all along with anyone who shared our opposition to the building of this incinerator in Leeds. Together with No Incinerator Leeds, Friends of the Earth, UKWIN and Palestine Solidarity Campaign we have provided very good soundly based opposition to this project on the grounds of cost, location, technology and the dubious record, both here and abroad, of the final bidder and we have worked with both Lib Dems and Labour who have both at times expressed their opposition to this project.

It appears that the main bones of this project were decided in 2006 by the then Lib Dem/Conservative administration and that the Labour Administration is unwilling or unable to alter the course of this project despite the radically different circumstances now.  


This situation seems to leave the residents of this ward with only one option left; the  voters of Burmantofts & Richmond Hill need to elect a candidate who is willing to stand on an Independent ticket and actually reflect the wishes of their electorate.  Party politics is clearly not working for the vast majority of the people of this area who are constantly ignored, and sidelined by all parties, witness the almost total annihilation of the infrastructure of this area and the lack of any investment in the quality of life or future of the residents.

The time has come to serve notice on ALL the politicians in this city that we, the electorate, want proper representation which puts our needs and wishes ahead of national policy or local party in-fighting and we think now is indisputably the time for a genuine LOCAL, INDEPENDENT candidate to be put forward to stand for the people who elect them and not themselves or their ‘party’ whatever party they represent, that is genuine localism!

IT IS TIME FOR WE, THE ELECTORATE, TO STAND UP FOR OURSELVES; TO STAND TOGETHER AND TO SAY LOUDLY AND CLEARLY "THIS IS OUR COMMUNITY AND WE WANT ACCOUNTABLE REPRESENTATION THAT PUTS US FIRST"

The Incinerator is on the agenda of the Richmond Hill Forum on the 5 December 2011

Artist's rendering of proposed incinerator

Now that the successful bidder for the for the contract has been announced and confirmed by the Executive Board (all three of our councillors attended) and the site they propose to use is known (The old wholesale Market site at Cross Green) we are not sure why they are coming to the meeting.  It is more than plain that they have not listened or taken on board any of the vociferous objections we, the residents attending the Richmond Hill Forum, have been putting forward since 2006 when this scheme was first proposed but perhaps they are using this as yet another 'Consultation' propaganda exercise?  If you look at the rather benign soft focus artist's rendering of what the proposed plant will look like you can hardly see the two 213 foot high chimneys in the background in fact we had to look quite carefully to see them at all, this however will not be a problem for those living near by as they will have no trouble at all seeing the chimneys or hearing the noise of the plant which operates 24/7 or from the traffic taking the waste to the site or removing the by-products.

However if you wish to make you position on the incinerator known come along to the meeting and have your say.  There will be those who object to the whole idea of incineration as an outdated and unsustainable technology; those who object to its location so close to their homes who will be condemned as NIMBY's by those in leafy suburbs who want an incinerator but don't want it anywhere near them; those who object to the successful bidder Veolia on both the grounds of their health and safety record in this country and/or their behaviour in Palestine and finally those who object to the project being financed by a PFI contract which sees us buying this facility on the' never, never' given the rapidly falling waste stream which will be available to fuel this plant.

Comments from Council Khan on a proposed incinerator in the heart of his ward

NO2incinerator have received an email from Councillor Asghar Khan, the newest councillor for our area, stating his position on the building an incinerator at the old wholesale market at Cross Green:

"The Council has decided to build an incinerator and decided upon a preferred supplier.  The preferred supplier wishes to build the incinerator on the old Market site identified by the Liberals/Tories when they ran Leeds. Your then Liberal Councillor and Leader of the Council, Cllr Brett agreed that site in 2007.  As your local Labour Councillors we will argue vigorously against the proposed site being used and lobby Council officials to ask them to identify an alternative site.  We will not support the building of an incinerator on the Market site.

Thank you"

Cllr Asghar Khan

Labour Councillor for

Burmantofts & Richmond Hill ward

Tel: 0776 123 0027

Well that's hardly a definitive statement on the efficacy of incineration in the 21st century nor a denial that he does not want ANY incinerator in our area!  What do our other two councillors say on this matter?

No one with an genuine interest in the future of this area, or for that matter any of the areas downwind of the 2 existing and 2 proposed incinerators thinks this is a good idea.

Friends of the Earth, NIL, UKWIN and other bodies have brought forward large amounts of evidence that indicate incineration as a technology is NOT the win, win option that its proponents claim it is.

Others, like Dr. Stuart Hodkinson of Leeds University, whose is an expert on PFI finance have pointed out the glaring disadvantages of this method of paying for such a long term project for the Council Tax payers of Leeds.

All of this is to no avail, this Labour council is no more willing to listen to the opinions of local residents than the last Lib/Con administration was.

Previous 'consultations' with some of the residents of the affected areas repeatedly returned a resounding NO to another incinerator in this area but since this was not the answer required it was totally ignored.  Minutes of the Richmond Hill Forums from 2006 onwards repeatedly state the strident opposition of local residents to the building of this plant anywhere in East Leeds but again this point of view went totally unheeded.

A new 'consultation' will now be started by Veolia, why -  they have decided the place, the size, the method, the hours of operation of the proposed plant - exactly what is left to 'consult' about, will they not build it if we say we don't want it, of course not?  This 'consultation' will be exactly the same as previous ones carried out by Leeds City Council consisting largely of asking as few people as possible loaded questions on hotly contested statements and totally ignoring any answers which do not give the 'correct' answer!

It is certainly true that this proposed plant is the very worst possible option the council could have chosen for the areas of East Leeds which will be most affected, either directly or indirectly, by this plant and no matter how Veolia attempt to disguised it an incinerator is still an incinerator whatever they call it  and it is still proposed to put it in the very heart of the most deprived areas of East Leeds unless we stand together to oppose this new blight on our communities.