Councillor Boswell says: “This proposal will lock the Council into a single solution – incineration. And it will lock Norfolk into processing annually 150,000 tonnes of waste over the project’s lifetime. This creates a demand for waste when we should be reducing it drastically. Norfolk may have to import waste to make this scheme economically viable.

Photo: Norfolk County Councillor Andrew Boswell.

“I will suggest instead that the Council re-thinks from scratch. They should start with a Zero Waste strategy – like other progressive Councils in Gwent, Bath and Doncaster. Norfolk waste could be drastically reduced by education, and promoting and supporting community waste schemes. What is left is best processed by a distributed network of smaller plants based on Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) processing, popular in Europe, and which doesn’t require incineration”.

Thank you, Mrs King, for giving me the opportunity to raise concerns to Cabinet about the proposed residual waste treatment plant at Costessey. I fully acknowledge the immediate dilemma that the Council finds itself in – needing to satisfy the Landfill Directive targets, and that something must be done to treat 150,000 tonnes per annum – but I question whether the preferred bidder’s proposal offers the best way to meet this challenge in the long-term for two key reasons:

this proposal will lock the Council into a single solution – incineration, and;

it will lock Norfolk into processing annually 150,000 tonnes of waste over the project’s lifetime.

In order to economically viable, for at least for 25 years, this single solution has these consequences:

It creates a continuing demand for waste, at a time that every effort must be made to reduce waste. The Council would no longer have the incentive to make further reductions in waste.

This could actually create a situation where WRG Ltd. may have to import waste into Norfolk – a possibility that they have refused to deny to the Evening News last week, and do at other plants that they run.

The proposal would take funding from other creative projects for better recycling and Zero-Waste initiatives, already being adopted by other Councils e.g. Gwent, Bath and Doncaster.

The proposed incinerator could become hugely expensive to maintain in the future as stricter emission controls come into force.

The reserve bidder’s proposal by contrast is based on Mechanical Biological Treatment - MBT. This is actually not a single process, but a family of possible process elements that can be combined in many different ways – it is, therefore, an adaptable and flexible approach – the outputs and processes can be configured, unlike incineration, to changing situations. It does not lock the Council into one solution for a quarter of a century.

I realise officers’ concerns that some outputs of MBT currently have problems with end disposal - Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) requires incineration too, bio-stabilised residues going to landfill doesn’t solve the landfill dilemma, and MBT derived composts are currently not allowed by Environment Agency. However, a 2005 report on the viability of MBT by the SITA Trust, who distribute funding through the Government's Landfill Tax Credit Scheme for environmental and community improvement projects, states some much more attractive MBT outputs for the UK situation. These include: biogas production, energy from gasification, and making a land-remediation material.

Public perception in this matter is very important - people don’t like incineration and they are rightly worried about the hazardous air pollutants and the toxic residues from flue gas treatments. The site is 500 yards from the approved Housing development at West Costessey for 1600 homes, and close to existing amenities at Longwater Lane and adjacent retail park. With a 246’ stack towering over Costessey, the residents will simple not believe that the proposed facilities are anything less than a threat to their health and amenity. The public will expect that other options have been fully explored – I do not believe that they have.

I draw your attention, too, to thirteen questions which were drawn up by Dr Jane Powell, an environmental scientists at UEA, and published in Thursday’s Evening News – Norfolk people will expect that these must be answered in a transparent way before any decision is made.

I urge the Cabinet not take this decision on economic reasons alone. This is short-term and does not amount to a full commitment to environmental responsibility for the future. I suggest the Cabinet should withdraw from the brink of the incineration route, which is ruled out in places like Essex because of public concern.

You will rightly ask what we should do instead. A much more attractive option for this council would be to first adopt a Zero-Waste strategy – Norfolk would be hugely innovative to do this. This would involve intensive waste reduction throughout the County through education, and promoting and supporting community waste schemes, such as the North Norfolk Environment Forum – and then to invest in MBT technologies which can be tuned to the changing situation. MBG is modular and cost-effective from plants as small as 10,000 tpa.

In the long-term, a waste hierarchy distributed across Norfolk would be the best environmental solution - a distributed network of smaller MBG plants could be produced which would serve smaller areas and better meet the proximity principle. Today, even the SRM scheme for a single MBT plant will be much more acceptable to the public – and less visible, it has stacks which are little more than the height of the ridge line of the complex.