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Leeds incinerator timetable released
Plans for a controversial incinerator in Leeds are expected to be submitted in the summer.
A presentation outlining Veolia Environmental Service’s plans to build a recycling and energy recovery facility went before Leeds City Council’s Plans Panel East last week.
The incinerator, which would be capable of burning 180,000 tonnes of rubbish a year, could be completed by 2016 at a site in Pontefract Lane, Cross Green.
Nick Hollands, Veolia’s director of planning, presented a pre-application at the meeting attended by around 20 residents.
He said the council’s annual rate of sending more than 200,000 tonnes of waste to landfill “is substantial and will escalate, and, more to the point, will be unsustainable financially, politically and environmentally”.
Landfill tax – currently £56 a tonne – costs the council £11.2m a year and tax increases could mean a rise to £16m next year.
Following more public consultation, Veolia hopes to have received a planning decision in early 2013 and aims to start the three-year construction process next year.
Tests, such as air quality, environmental impact and transport assessments, have yet to be done and could result in amendments to the plans.
Planning officers explained at the meeting that the main building would be the equivalent to 14-storeys in height, whereas the chimney stack, at 75m, would be around 24-storeys high, although much of it would be housed inside the facility.
The No 2 Incinerator group is on of those opposing the idea.
At the meeting, Coun Peter Gruen (Lab, Crossgates and Whinmoor) said: “The height of the building and the height of the stack are issues in terms of visual harm that exercise me most from a planning point of view.”
Around 300 jobs would be created during construction, with 45 permanent jobs.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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Comments
There are 5 comments to this article
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Paul Hu
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 10:25 PMIsn't this a strange posting bearing in mind that the Allerton proposal has just bitten the dust in the York City and North Yorkshire County Council proposal. This proposal is equally daft for the same logic expounded in that offering. Compared to the money proposed to be spent on the unwanted Allerton incineration this one is a little lower, but why do we need it? This reckless expenditure the Coucil Tax Payers money cannot be justified. There is a proposal about to be built a few miles away at South Milford which will more than meet the Leeds requirement. When this proposal was first lauded in from of invitees to consider bidding it was already known by the advising Consultants to Leeds that a proposak for a complete alternative was available for turning the waste into ethanol. This was though never ever going to be considered for that plant because even though it would have been costed at barely a quarter of the current proposition the Consultants and Advisors had already made their minds up that incineration was the proposed outcome. Now a few years later the outcome of the planning rebuff and the objections of the public - the Council Tax Payers and financiers to the project - have spoken up and they should now know that they can roundly stopped the project. Now we hear that at South Milford (which is barely 15 miles or so south of York City) Mytum and Selby has proposed developing the John Smiths Old Maltings Site into a Bioethanol plant - it has been given the name the Maltings Organic Treatment Facility - and it has Full Planning Permission whereby it will be allowed to convert the residual waste from the area and make the transportation fuel Ethanol which can be blended with petrol. This proposal has been gathering momentum recently following a delay in closing financing which was the consequence of the current banking crisis when the original financing bank went bankrupt. Now we hear that there are a group of well-healed investors willing to place the capital cost up (the £80 Million) to make this happen. For local Leeds activists who have garnered support against the Allerton Incineration plant the size of the Maltings Organic Facility is identical to that proposed by Leeds City Council. Furthermore it is also understood that Mytum and Selby have also set out a bigger plan to develop a second facility in Goole to do the same procedures with the same company in partnership to make Biobutanol for transport uses. That plant will be treating we hear over 700,000 tonnes of residual waste per year and will make around up to 150 Million litres of biofuels in a proposed cost of less than £120130 million. As Mytum and Selby are a local company and has this intuitive and drive to innovate what is it about them that is different? Well as it is also reported elsewhere when they were doing their research they went around Europe looking at the best solution for treating waste and their conclusion was that making ethanol was by far the best potential as it reduced the quantity of waste being left to near zero and that even then that final 5% could be used as a filler in concrete. So what is this development? I have looked at their web site and came across their planning document from 2009 and it is one that is totally enclosed and contained in water - no chimneys, no smoke, no emissions to the atmosphere. Indeed their proposal followed a document which was widely published in the Chemical Engineers institute in 2008 which showed what the proposal was all about. Now I read that the Company working with them has started work on similar schemes in Holland Malta VietNam the Arabian Gulf in the USA and Canada as well as in Argentina and Israel. Why? Simply because this is the best proposal on offer to provide a real cost effective and environmentally acceptable solution to our waste problems. It is better than all the current choices around and it is being rolled out in a big way from the EU throughout the World. Why then don't we all do in Yorkshire what really needs to happen and that is stop the Leeds incineration project. We do not need the one in Leeds and neither do we need the one Allerton as Mytum and Selby’s initiative make that proposal redundant. Councillors and Councils stop this nonsense and let’s send the waste to South Milford down the road to this facility. We would save at least £1000 Million straight away in avoiding these two. Importantly though this is hard-earned money of Torkshire people - you and me - and we do not want this built here. Leeds City Council take note, there is already a solution and it awaits you.
S A Covell
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 05:54 PMWhy are you showing the old pictures ? It was admitted by Veolia at the pre planning meeting that the chimney was approx 10 metres too short on these! It is already heavily airbrushed into the background in all the published drawings AND to take even a hypothetical view as the one you show must have required standing in a twenty foot deep trench on Pontefract Lane. All the talk about biodiversity and greenspace too is a smokescreen, lets remember that this Incinerator is to be built in the industrialised area of Cross Green, and that a few trees and plants around it will have little or no impact on the sight of a 24 + storey high building. The cackle of laughter when Veolia described it as an Iconic Innovative Gateway to East Leeds was clearly audible from elected members and the public alike. Its in an incinerator - full stop. As regards the jobs - only 45 permanent ones would be created and as was clearly stated many of those will come from within Veolias own ranks. Every one of the councillors round that table has at one point or another said they were against this project or for it ............ depending on whether they required the local communities votes at the time to hang on to power. Leeds boasts about being a forward thinking city - why are the authority so stupid as to believe this is the answer to residual waste disposal. There are many other alternatives to landfill. It will be interesting to see how this pans out............ if this is built our local councillors can be sure of one thing. Nobody will vote for any of them ever again, which may offer a glimmer of hope.(A revolution anybody?) After all a multi million pound command centre for the fire and rescue service lies un-used in Wakefield, maybe we will end up with something similar in Cross Green. A huge white elephant. And can i just add - Veolia when asked at the Richmond Hill Forum in Decemember refused to comment on the communitys request for a guarentee to THEM not the council that no waste would be imported from outside Leeds. They said the partner in the project was the council not the community - i think that speaks volumes for what is to come. Sarah Covell. No2 Incinerator & COVEN.
Michael Ryan
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 04:41 PMHave Veolia looked at infant death rates around Sheffield incinerator? http:ukhr.euincinerationsheffieldsheffieldrotherhammap.pdf
Mark Paul
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 12:03 PMWill they pass the landfill tax saving on to council tax payers, or pocket it ?
eastleeds
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 11:53 AMwell isnt it odd that veolia and leeds city council will tell you that the emissions that come out of the stack are harmless but it still needs to be 75m above floor level ?.............
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