Brunner Mond reveals designs for waste-burning power station at Lostock (From Northwich Guardian)
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Brunner Mond reveals designs for waste-burning power station at Lostock
4:30pm Wednesday 27th January 2010 in
BRUNNER Mond has unveiled three possible designs of how its Lostock power station could look if it gets the go-ahead.
The Northwich-based company wants to build an incinerator on the site of the former power station off Griffiths Road in a bid to generate its own energy and save millions on gas.
The chimneys would be around 90 metres high and the tallest building would be about 48 metres – measurements Brunner Mond say are similar to those of the existing power station.
John Kerrigan, Brunner Mond’s managing director, said: “The building will not be bigger than the old power station, the stacks will not be bigger than the chimneys there before.
“People think it is our Indian owners who want to do this but it isn’t. It’s mine and the other directors’ decision and we live here and work here in Northwich.
“It would not be detrimental to the town, we wouldn’t be allowed to do that and it’s not what we have ever done, we are not trying to get away with things.”
The company’s Delfzijl plant in the Netherlands closed earlier this year, and Mr Kerrigan said the move is to stop the Northwich sites from heading the same way.
He said: “We are taking a realistic view that if we carry on like this it’s a risk.
“Developing new sources of power in a tough and increasingly expensive energy market will ensure we can continue producing and selling soda ash and employing local people.
“And using pre-treated waste as a source of fuel means we will be helping to reduce the amount of waste material going to landfill, so cutting the levels of CO2 and methane emissions harmful to the environment.”
It will be down to the Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change to grant planning permission, but Cheshire West and Chester will be consulted.
Action group CHAIN said it has reservations about the true scaling of the drawing.
Spokesman Liam Byrne said: “The plans are misleading, they don’t show the scale.
The chimneys are going to be twice the size of Nelson’s Column.”
Comments(24)
Regg
says...
1:31pm Thu 28 Jan 10
This Incinerator is to replace the existing eyesore of a power station and do you remember all those other ugly, grotesque ICI sprawls many of which still disfigure the landscape.
The planners and developers difigured this town many years ago! (observe the council offices, shopping precinct, police station, law courts etc.)
These incinerators will dispose of the waste WE ALL generate in a safe and clean way rather than throwing it into landfill sites which pollute our environment and for which we are fined £m's by the EU.
They can generate much needed power more effectively than erecting hundreds of 'Wind turbines' that are a terrible eyesore in many picturesque areas.
It may generate a few jobs as well!
Sorry, but I think WE need to think about the environment, its future and more realistic ways to generate energy rather than just shouting CHAIN! NOT IN MY BACK YARD!
I do agree about the traffic, that is a far worse polluter and bigger danger to human life.
Liam Byrne
says...
1:55pm Thu 28 Jan 10
The garbage incinerator that TATA /Brunner Mond wants to build in Northwich would be located less than a mile from Tesco and about half a mile from local schools. It is intended to burn about 3,600,000 lbs of waste every day of the year hauled in from all over the UK for at least the next twenty five years
TATA/Brunner Mond is bent on offering places like Manchester and Birmingham the opportunity to send the filthy contents of their rubbish bins to Northwich for burning. What an insult!
No amount of management waffle and 'artist impressions' which seek to make incinerator monstrosities look like fairy castles can conceal the disgusting truth.
Sorry, Mr Kerrigan, you are seriously underestimating the intelligence of people in this area and their determination not to see their town desecrated even if it upsets your bosses back in Mumbai
Sue Statham
says...
2:21pm Thu 28 Jan 10
Shouldn't we all be NIMBYS, Regg? If we don't stick up for ourselves, who will? I would also like to add that CHAIN do not want an incinerator in their back-yard or anyone else's back-yard, come to that!
oulton
says...
2:57pm Thu 28 Jan 10
yampster
says...
3:53pm Thu 28 Jan 10
Sue Statham
says...
4:40pm Thu 28 Jan 10
bonehead
says...
10:18am Fri 29 Jan 10
Sue Statham
says...
2:22pm Fri 29 Jan 10
If you wish to have any meaningful contribution to this very serious issue, which we believe, for many reasons, will have a detrimental effect on our quality of life, letters on a website seem to me to be a bit of a cop-out. You need to get involved.It is hard work and time consuming, but if your heart's in it, it's well worth the effort.
Just Google CHAIN (Cheshire anti-incinerator network) for details of our next meeting. You, and any other members of the public, would be made most welcome. You would then realise that we do not deal in non-facts and clap-trap!
bonehead
says...
3:24pm Fri 29 Jan 10
Sue Statham
says...
4:52pm Fri 29 Jan 10
The Viridor proposal at Lostock and the RRS proposal at Wincham are the two remaining companies left after Cheshire County Council's consultation over several years to decide who would treat Cheshire Waste. Although CHAIN objects to both proposals, and the Council are well-aware of this, it HAS to be one or the other. We believe that the treated waste from Northwich would go to Ineos Chlor at Runcorn, another incinerator proposal strongly objected to by us, but in the end, decided by a Government quango. CHAIN fights incineration in Cheshire. We fought the Ineos Chlor proposals at Runcorn, which were given government approval, also the Peel Holdings incinerator proposals at Ince Marshes, which were also government approved. We are, at the moment campaigning against the Covanta incinerator proposals in Middlewich and also the Brunner Mond incinerator in Lostock. It really beggars belief when people call CHAIN NIMBYS.
To suggest that CHAIN seemingly approves of the Viridor scheme is not true.We do not want the blight of incineration in Runcorn any more than in Northwich. As our name states we are anti-incineration, no- matter where, but a small group of local residents can't take on the whole country. The Runcorn incinerator is a fait-accompli, and Ineos Chlor will be trawling the county,looking for rubbish to feed it with. If Cheshire West and Chester Council approves the Viridor plans, Ineos Chlor will have a vital food source from that plant.
CHAIN has been fighting incineration for years, and suffered many bitter defeats, but still we keep on going,and, although increasingly battle- scarred, we will keep on going.
Liam Byrne
says...
10:17pm Sat 30 Jan 10
The fact is that if TATA/Brunner Mond were to use heavy goods lorries, it would involve about 450 trips per day on a 7 day basis , or more likely, about 520 on a Monday to Saturday plan. Assuming a 10 hours restriction was imposed by the Council, as would be likely, that would result in an average of 52 lorries per hour during the day. Repeat '52 heavy goods lorries per hour'. The diesel fumes alone would be lethal!
(By the way, CHAIN will soon publish a realistic illustration of what the TATA/Brunner Mond incinerator would really look like. This is in contrast to the laughable 'artist impressions' that have appeared lately which look like nice fairytale castles.)
Regarding 'bonehead's' touching belief that TATA/Brunner Mond would deliver the garbage to Northwich by rail, my advice to him is to read their propaganda sheets again and note the range of get-out clauses and non committal waffle they contain.
I hope that 'bonehead' and 'oulton' will join with thousands of Northwich people and send a clear message to
the TATA bosses in Mumbai telling them to leave our town alone.
bonehead
says...
10:22am Mon 1 Feb 10
Sue Statham
says...
10:38pm Mon 1 Feb 10
Liam Byrne and I sing from the same "hymn sheet" note for note and I concur with all the statements made by him.Have you walked around our "great little town" recently? It's shabby and dirty and badly in need of investment. Do you really think that a huge polluting waste incinerator will do anything for the town's future? I do not believe that the future of Tata/Brunner Mond in Northwich is dependant on the building of this incinerator. I believe that this is a risk assessment strategy. Should their existing soda ash company become no-longer commercially viable, what could be better than a waste-incinerator, already in situ, and set to make Tata/Brunner Mond millions for many years to come. You will never convince me that Tata/Brunner Mond has the interests and welfare of local people at heart. They will make big money from our town and that is surely their core objective. Show me one benefit this incinerator will bring to our town. Lets's face it, I.C.I's legacy to Northwich was the pollution of the land, so it follows that we are already a post-industrial and polluted town.
Tata/Brunner Mond's incinerator will not solve Northwich's problems. It will add to them, and for this reason CHAIN will continue to oppose THEIR plans for OUR town!
bonehead
says...
1:35pm Tue 2 Feb 10
Sue Statham
says...
2:09pm Tue 2 Feb 10
"air moved by angel's wings" is far above CHAIN's remit. We'll stick to the toxic emissions that will be affecting you and me." Rabble rousing" is not a strategy employed by CHAIN. Our main concern is that local people have all the facts and are not swayed into any sort of "feel good factor" that Tata/Brunner Mond are attempting to surround their incinerator with. No-matter the name of the company planning to build a polluting incinerator, I defend my right to fight for what I believe is right for now and right for future generations. If you don't agree, bonehead, c'est la vie!
It's suddenly occurred to me.. you're not one of the work-force at Tata/Brunner Mond are you?
bonehead
says...
4:45pm Tue 2 Feb 10
Liam Byrne
says...
6:50pm Tue 2 Feb 10
If you refer to my contribution above dated 28 Jan, you will see that it it contained five statements I described as 'facts'. Here they are again:
1 The waste incinerator would be less than one mile from Tesco
2 About half a mile from local schools
3 It would burn about 3,600,000 lbs
of rubbish every day
4 From all over the UK
5 For at least the next twenty five years.
If you have evidence to show that any of these are false you should be prepared to tell us about it otherwise leave it to the public to decide who is
guilty of 'misrepresentations'
.
In conclusion, I have just noticed that you somehow feel unable to write the dreaded 'I' word (for incinerator) when referring to TATA/Brunner Mond's lunatic scheme to foist a giant waste burning incinerator on our town. Strange affliction that! In CHAIN's experience, people who work for incinerator companies and their public relations spin doctors seem to be particularly prone to it. The cure is a good dose of honestly.Worth a try!
Sue Statham
says...
11:02pm Tue 2 Feb 10
Three years ago I read on a House of Commons website, and I quote, "the new generation of incinerators are far safer than the older ones , but just how safe, we do not know". So no-matter who tells me, be it government department or health expert, that incineration is safe, I do not believe them. A modern incinerator would in no way RESEMBLE the dark satanic mills of the Victorian era, and would not be belching out filth. As I understand it, the rubbish will be transported into the county, subsequently incinerated, and any TOXIC elements, too small to be captured, will travel up the 90 metres stack and be wafted away into the atmosphere. There is, of course, the resultant large volume of toxic ash which will have to be transported to another site , to be disposed of elsewhere.Can this possibly be the same "green" plant that Tata/Brunner Mond refers to in their P.R. extravaganza? I believe that our local council should do what many other councils are now doing. They are not being tied into incinerator contracts of 25years plus and are looking to invest in newer, cleaner technology for waste disposal. There are also councils, such as Liverpool and Knowsley, who have adopted strongly-worded anti-incineration policies. Anyone like to make a guess in which direction their waste might be heading?
underwhelmed
says...
11:18pm Tue 2 Feb 10
This is complete nonsense and is based on nothing more than an urban myth. The original claim was made in a paper on dioxin emissions during bonfire night 1995 in the Environmental Science & Technology Journal (Lee, Green et al vol 33, No 17, 1999) but it was quickly established that any dioxins released during bonfire night was more than likely from incidental combustion of waste.
When fireworks were then lab tested to establish their dioxin emissions researchers could find none.
All this was pointed out in the literature at the time and the authors accepted that their methodologies had probably led them to an incorrect conclusion.
Strangely this is forgotten by the Incinerator industry who regularly trot it out as a rationale for why they should be allowed to pump them out 24/7 for the next 25 years.
I seem to recall WRG using this line two years ago in the Guardian at which point they were shot down in flames. It's a nonsense and factually incorrect.
If we really want to look for reasons to object to this incinerator, how about that there will never be enough waste to fill it?
For waste to burn it needs to have a calorific value, and as such will most likely be based on fossil fuels. If you accept that everything that can be recycled will automatically be removed from the waste stream, this means what is left is likely to be plastic waste. Plastic is derived from oil and we are fast running out of oil. In fact we have passed or are passing the peak of oil production on this planet. (for more on this visit this site and have a good read...http://www.al
bartlett.org/).
Oil prices are currently rising, there will be a scarcity of supply in our lifetimes and operations set up to burn it simply will not be viable.
The entire model for incinerator operation is predicated on rising waste streams and they are already declining. This is nothing more than a white elephant and I for one don't want it anywhere on this planet, never mind Northwich.
Regg
says...
9:58am Wed 3 Feb 10
Your opposition is based purely on rumour, misinformation and scare stories:
Its got big chimneys?
Its near Tescos??
It will omit toxic gases?
It burns OTHER peoples waste!
It will be an eyesore!
These are NOT proper objections!!
They have been brought into the debate to stir up irrational fear and to distort and distract from the main objectives which are:
To create an effective and safe means of waste disposal
To do this with minimum disruption by choosing an existing Industrial site
To recycle OUR waste instead of sending it to landfill sites
To generate OUR OWN energy for much needed power
To create jobs in the local area
All waste will be treated and any toxic gases removed BEFORE being released into the atmosphere
So come on Sue and friends please stop objecting for objecting sake and look to the future of regeneration and conservation in a positive and beneficial way!
bonehead
says...
9:44am Thu 4 Feb 10
Sue Statham
says...
11:17pm Thu 4 Feb 10
As far as health risks are concerned, I am not so gullible as to believe that incinerators are safe. Show me a report that says incinerators ARE safe, and I'll show you one that says they ARE NOT.Covanta, the American company who wants to build a waste incinerator in Middlewich, stated in their first brochure that incinerators had no health risks. In a subsequent brochure the wording had changed ,ever so slightly, to no SIGNIFICANT health risks. What does that word actually mean, or perhaps suggest?
A decision will soon be made by C.W.A.C. as to which company will be awarded the Cheshire Waste contract, either Viridor at Lostock (onthe same site as the Tata/Brunner Mond incinerator site) or R.R.S. at Wincham. Can anyone hazard a guess as to how many extra lorries will be on our roads?
Northwich has become a very sad and grubby town and is badly in need of investment, the kind of investment that will create a vibrant and pleasant town, a town that people will actually want to come to visit. Making the area into one big dumping ground is a retrograde step. It's all about what we want for the future. Do we want to be proud of where we live, or do we want to provide the Indian company, Tata/Brunner Mond with a great big money-making incinerator?
Dot Gamble
says...
11:49pm Sun 7 Feb 10
We are, in actual fact, exercising our democratic right to say NO to this huge structure which he naively states will be clean and safe. Can he prove that statement? Does he know what the combined output of dioxins and toxic wastes will be from the planned Bedminster Plant at Lostock, the planned RSS Plant in Wincham the proposed Covanta incinerator in Middlewich, this proposed Brunner Mond incinerator in Lostock and, of course, the already granted incinerator in Frodsham and the biggest in Europe which will be in Runcorn. I have not found anyone yet who can give me that answer. If it all goes ahead it will be an unprecedented situation because nowhere else on earth is there such a concentration of waste incinerators as there will be here in this small area of Cheshire. That is fact.
The irony is we do not need all these incinerators because the incinerator capacity that has already received planning permission far outweighs the rubbish we produce. It, therefore, does not take much brain power to realise that rubbish will have to be brought in.
I suggest that if Regg cannot prove that it will be safe then we should err on the side of caution for the sake of future generations.
Many toxicologists feel that incineration is not safe.
Can he also say why he thinks it is ok for other areas to say no unequivocally (I am thinking of Knowsley and Merseyside) and as a result of that decision it looks like Cheshire is the destination for their waste. Does Regg not think that everyone should look after their own waste and that we should not be a dumping ground for the true NIMBY's.
We can hardly be called Nimby's with that lot on our doorstep. He does appear to agree that the extra traffic on our roads is a threat to health but how does he propose the waste will arrive here?
Oulton of Northwich is delusional if they think the increase in traffic only amounts to 3 lorries per hour and that old cherry regarding fireworks putting out more pollution than an incinerator is an insult to our intelligence.
I also need to raise an issue with Bonehead, Northwich - 29 Jan 2010 who mentions Brunner Mond bringing the waste in by rail. Can he inform us where from? Something else I would like to ask Bonehead since he/she appears to be an authority on Brunner Mond - what is biomass? As he will be aware, Brunner Mond have stated in their sanitised and sterile literature that they will burn biomass. It seems innocuous but when researched I was most concerned to learn that this little word 'biomass' covers a multitude of nasty things like human and animal excrement, slaughterhouse waste, processed farm slurry and other 'savoury' components. Will they be bringing this in by road or rail and will it smell or not?
I just have one more question (at the moment) - are all the people who are using nom-de-plumes stool pigeons (no pun intended)?
I have no problem stating my name and the area in which I live. I also have no problem in saying that I trust CHAIN and the work they do which is more than I can say for the spin put out by Brunner Mond/Tata. They have a vested interest in building this thing here, CHAIN have nothing to gain except to be able to say that we fought to make Northwich and the surrounding areas of Cheshire a safer, healthier place for our families and loved ones in which to live. We are all entitled to a decent environment.
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Sue Statham says...
11:21pm Wed 27 Jan 10
So the toxic emissions from an incinerator, the possible health risks, and the pollution from the hundreds of extra traffic "movements" will not be detrimental to the town?
Having just received another glossy P.R. brochure from Brunner Mond, I studied the three artist's impressions of what we might expect the incinerator to look like, and it was even suggested that we might like to choose which one we preferred...a bit like someone telling you that you are going to be hit by a car, and then asking if you have any preference as to what colour the car might be.
I do hope that the people of Northwich are not so gullible as to believe that a Brunner Mond incinerator is just what the town needs.