Court hearing for black bags to go up in flames
Councillors from a number of London boroughs, including Ealing and Hounslow, are up against Ken Livingstone over plans to allow them to incinerate waste.
West London Waste Authority (WLWA) works on behalf of London boroughs including Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond. Its board includes Cllr Will Brooks of Ealing Council and Cllr Andrew Dakers of Hounslow Council.
The Authority wants to place a contract which would allow 110,000 tonnes a year of residual waste to be burned. This would almost certainly be at Grundon's massive incinerator at Colnbrook, just over the London border.
The waste from domestic 'black bags', may contain large amounts of
recyclable or compostable material. Ken Livingstone has issued a
'Direction' opposing the contract, and in response WLWA is
taking him to court.
The two Liberal Democrat Councillors on the board Martin Ellengorn of Richmond and Andrew Dakers abstained in the vote. They felt that West Waste and the Mayor should work together on the issue and accused the Tory majority on the board of being intent on confrontation.
Andew Dakers said, “Cllr Ellengorn and I would like to see West Waste put vastly more effort into finding sites for sustainable waste processing facilities within West London. I have called for this consistently at every board meeting since last May. Action to identify sites is now being taken by the West London Boroughs, but not yet fast enough in our view.”
The initial hearing is on Friday 23 February in the High Court and WLWA have
set aside £100,000 for the case.
Bernard Burns, waste campaigner for West London Friends of the Earth,
said "We are outraged at West London Waste Authority wasting council
taxpayers' money trying to resist the Mayor's Direction. Instead of
wasting our money on court cases, they should be using it to reduce the
amount of waste and dispose of the remainder by clean methods."
Friends of the Earth (FOE) is opposed to incineration because:
" It emits toxic gases and particles
" It produces highly toxic 'fly ash'
" It burns material which could be recycled
" It produces huge quantities of greenhouse gases
FOE believes that the all material that can be recycled or composted
should be removed from mixed waste, meaning that minimal amounts of
material need to be landfilled or incinerated.
After years of warnings, the government is now forcing waste authorities
to act by introducing fines for excess landfill. It is the fear of fines
that has sparked WLWA into trying to place a contract allowing
incineration.
Bernard Burns commented, "WLWA is entirely responsible for this fiasco.
It has known for 5 years that constraints on landfill were coming. They
still have 3 years or more before there is any chance of fines for
excess landfill. We call upon WLWA to call off this wasteful action and
use their time and money to set up clean and economical disposal
routes."
February 19, 2007
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