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| Development committee meeting in Sutton |
I think we are all a bit stunned by what happened last night. In dramatic scenes we came away with a score draw. Three committee members voted in favour, three against and two abstained. The Chair then had the casting vote and despite initially voting
for the incinerator, he opted to defer.
I ended up speaking first. Below is my speech in full. I missed out the opening paragraph because I knew I was going over the allocated 4 minutes, and I felt the Chair wasn't going to let me go over. By the way, please check out an
excellent blog by local party member Brendan Walsh.
Today I am speaking on
behalf of the Croydon Green Party, but I am also speaking on behalf of the
130,000 people who live in the Croydon North area, where I live, who reside
downwind from this proposed incinerator. This council may not have received
their submission BUT it doesn’t mean they don’t care. Many don’t speak English
as a first language, they are more concerned about, job security, paying the
rent and getting food on the table. Councillor David Dean, from Merton, pointed
out that if Wimbledon
Village was downwind from
the planned incinerator, you can be assured the council would face a £1m lawsuit
for even contemplating such a solution. Is this fair? Is it fair that a
deprived area that doesn’t have a wealthy residents association, able to afford
a bank of lawyers with the technical expertise to scupper the plan – ends up
with an incinerator?
I strongly believe that if the
Liberal Democrats on this Council were in opposition, they would be sitting in
this chair, their friends and family would be in the public gallery struggling
to comprehend how the council can take such an immoral decision. You only need
to go across the border to Merton to see the Liberal Democrats voted for a
motion to Stop The Incinerator.
Now you might feel that I am
speaking from an idealistic position, but I have to tell you what is on the
table before you is not even a pragmatic solution. This is Viridor’s profit maximising
solution, designed to tie in councils on long term, fixed tonnage contracts...de-risked
for Viridor. This is not from me, this is actually on the Penon Group’s web
site, Penon being the FTSE 250 parent company for Viridor. You don’t need
reminding that Social and Environmental costs don’t appear on Penon’s balance
sheet.
Viridor have built local
sized Anaerobic digesters around the country, why not here? Other authorities
are approving Mechanical and Biological Treatment plants. Why not here? Other
councils are piloting newer more advanced technologies. Why not here?
It is important to note that
the proposed incinerator does not pre sort the waste. Viridor claims that the
waste is pre-sorted but their own propaganda video concedes that Viridor will
treat the non-hazardous waste that is left after local residents and businesses
have removed recyclable and compostable materials.
I would also query whether
councillors have been impartial on this Committee. Councillors have visited
Viridor’s Slough incinerator at the invitation
of Viridor. Yet, Councillors have not attended screenings of the film Trashed,
which by the way if they had, they would know that several European doctors
associations representing 33,000 doctors
wrote to the European Parliament citing widespread concerns on incinerator
particle emissions, specifically fine and ultrafine particles.
What also needs to be
considered are the CO2 emissions, which are levelled the same as a gas fired
power station, per a unit of energy generated. How can this fit in with the
Mayor of London’s target of 60 per cent reduction of CO2 emissions by 2025.
Moreover, If the government adopts CO2 emissions targets for electricity
generation – something Scotland
already has done - who will bear the cost for this?
Residents
in Beddington were promised a country park when the landfill license ended. How
can this be a country park with two 95 metre pollution emitting chimneys inside
it? Visitors to this country park and Beddington Park
will no doubt feel a similar emotion to those who take a trip to the beach in
South East Kent and look to their left and see Dungeness Nuclear Power station
in the distance.
I sense what councillors are
thinking... you see the projected savings made by diverting waste away from
landfill.
[Councillors may also reconcile
themselves by saying that pesticides in the food chain are more of a concern
than pollutants entering the food supply through incineration. They may also
say that airport activity is going to affect Nitrogen Dioxide levels much more
than this energy recovery facility. BUT that presupposes that something will be
done about those things. This is not guaranteed. ]
You are in a unique
situation in that you can actually make a difference tonight. You can even look
at your projected savings from diverting waste away from landfill and focus on
investing that money in reuse and recycling jobs to achieve those savings. This
way, waste going to landfill will be cut and hundreds more jobs are created. Two towns in Powys, in Wales, managed
to rocket their recycling rate to 74 per cent. It can be done if there is the
political will. If recycling rates were at 74 per cent in Sutton then we
wouldn’t need this incinerator.
There are plenty of planning
reasons to reject this application. [The location being a Site
of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation.; also
an Air Quality Management Area and Metropolitan Open Land. The mitigation offered
by Viridor is little more than confectionery.]
At the
very least hold back approval until the Health Protection Agency reports back
on the health effects of incinerators in 2014.
We urge you to take the honourable
choice and vote down this proposal.
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Tags
croydon,
greenparty
