Northwich incinerator plans come under fire (From Northwich Guardian)

When looking further than CHAIN's views and opposals, a bigger picture of global waste and energy, produces a completely different set of facts. CHAIN's campaign may have been valid 20yrs ago but technology has advanced significantly to cope with regulations and emission control. Please read this small piece I discovered with a quick internet search;
In a study from 1994, Delaware Solid Waste Authority found that, for same amount of produced energy, incineration plants emitted fewer particles, hydrocarbons and less SO2, HCl, CO and NOx than coal-fired power plants, but more than natural gas fired power plants. According to Germany's Ministry of the Environment, waste incinerators reduce the amount of some atmospheric pollutants by substituting power produced by coal-fired plants with power from waste-fired plants.

Gaseous emissions
Dioxin and furans
The most publicized concerns from environmentalists about the incineration of municipal solid wastes (MSW) involve the fear that it produces significant amounts of dioxin and furan emissions. Dioxins and furans are considered by many to be serious health hazards.

Older generation incinerators that were not equipped with adequate gas cleaning technologies were indeed significant sources of dioxin emissions. Today, however, due to advances in emission control designs and stringent new governmental regulations, incinerators emit virtually no dioxins.

In 2005, The Ministry of the Environment of Germany, where there were 66 incinerators at that time, estimated that "...whereas in 1990 one third of all dioxin emissions in Germany came from incineration plants, for the year 2000 the figure was less than 1 %. Chimneys and tiled stoves in private households alone discharge approximately twenty times more dioxin into the environment than incineration plants."

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, incineration plants are no longer significant sources of dioxins and furans. In 1987, before the governmental regulations required the use of emission controls, there was a total of 10,000 grams (350 oz) of dioxin emissions from U.S. incinerators. Today, the total emissions from the 87 plants are only 10 grams (0.35 oz) yearly, a reduction of 99.9 %.

Backyard barrel burning of household and garden wastes, still allowed in some rural areas, generates 580 grams (20 oz) of dioxins yearly. Studies conducted by the US-EPA demonstrate that the emissions from just one family using a burn barrel produces more emissions than an incineration plant disposing of 200 metric tons (220 short tons) of waste per day.


I would also be interested in knowing the daily emission levels of CO2 and dioxins as a result of vehicle movements from the Morrisons distribution centre. With Tesco's DC not far away there will obviously be a potential health risk from those emissions and are they monitored or controlled? Maybe another campaign is in order.

Interesting piece but missing the point I'm afraid. The argument here isn’t whether incinerators are clean or safe. If we try to decide that point we could quote statistics at each other for weeks on end and never agree.

No, it’s the simple matter that no matter how you dress it up this is the single worst way of dealing with residual waste that there is. If you assume that matter can neither be created nor destroyed then you have to ask the question, ‘where does it all go when we burn it’?

The dioxins and furans that are produced, along with the other products of incomplete combustion are just the tip of the iceberg. Incinerators produce a host of other undesirable chemicals in concentrations that are lethal to humans; they continually churn out particulate matter proven to be linked to asthma and respiratory diseases and at the end of it you get around a third of the volume you put in back out as toxic ash which needs to be disposed of in toxic landfill sites. Incinerators therefore perpetuate the problem they are supposed to be solving.

Add to this the inescapable fact that residual waste volumes are declining across the country (and across Europe) and you have to wonder what they will burn? Questions are now being asked about the Swedish model, often held up as a paragon of virtue, as they are now burning materials which could be recycled just to keep the plants running. So this is no longer ‘energy from waste’, they are destroying forever the finite resources of this planet.

I’ve no doubt that you can find examples of ‘well run’ incinerators in various locations but it doesn’t change the fact that this is now, and will always be, a white elephant. And I for one am deeply unhappy at the prospect of it being parked at the edge of town.

Oh, and finally, all the examples you give of well run plants that keep within emission control levels - these levels are actually determined by what is technologically feasible not by what is safe for humans or the environment. I want my councillors to stand up and fight to prevent us becoming the dumping ground of the North West, and to not allow this firm to use the pretext of creating ‘green energy’ to slowly poison us over the next 25 years.

Yet another groupie emerges to defend the insane plans of TATA/Brunner Mond to ship 3.600.000 pounds of the most revolting waste into Northwich every day for incineration. All for the financial benefit of a foreign organisation based nearly five thousand miles away. How weird is that?

'Underwhelmed' above deserves our thanks for knocking back Chandy's so called technical points which he apparently gathered in a 'quick internet search'.

It goes to show that there is stuff on the internet that can be used to prove anything if you are that desperate. I know a bloke who once proved that Elvis is alive and living in Wigan using the same technique!

Perhaps Chandy would like to comment on the 'biomass' which TATA/Brunner Mond have announced
would be used as fuel for their incinerator. If he does his homework he will find that this innocuous sounding material usually contains horrors like human sewage, farm manure, slaughterhouse waste and other similar goodies. The incinerator
would need 150,000 lbs of waste every hour to operate efficiently. Can even he explain to the men, women and children of Northwich why they should accept this amount of other peoples' crud on their doorstep and, more pertinently, in their lungs after incineration.

Thought not!

Representatives of Indian company Tata/Brunner Mond are giving a presentation to Rudheath Parish councillors on Monday 8th February at 7.00pm. Members of the public are allowed to attend. There are many pertinent questions that require justifiable answers.
The meeting is in a hall on the High School site in Rudheath.

I attended the public meeting held by CHAIN at Northwich Memorial Hall recently and although I am appalled at the lack of support that we, as residents, are getting from our councillors in general in opposing the plans of Brunner Mond for the incinerator at Lostock Gralam, I applaud Councillor Terry Birtwistle. For those who did not attend, Mr Birtwistle had the guts to speak out against this proposal. We absolutely need and have a right to the support of our elected councillors. It is support like this that will be remembered when the next elections come around.

I, too would like to thank Councillor Terry Birtwistle, who signed the anti-incinerator petition. Councillor Birtwistle represents Northwich East and Shakerley ward, so do contact him with your objections to the Tata/Brunner Mond incinerator proposals. Apparently county councillors on planning committees cannot voice their opinions on the incinerator plans, and they are 30 in number. Where are the other councillors who are meant to represent us? We must continue to write to our councillors, no-matter what. They may not want to step out of the shadows and help us, but we must let them know , in no uncertain terms, that we want neither a waste-incinerator nor the huge numbers of HGVs that will bring in the waste to keep it operational 24hours a day, 7days a week, 365days a year!