How should Leeds deal with its household waste? Opinions are divided as David Marsh reports.
Long-suffering residents in south-east Leeds are – to borrow a phrase from modern sporting parlance – used to “taking one for the team.”
While the gleaming glass and steel towers of the city centre are just a short bus ride away, theirs is a corner of Leeds no stranger to the necessary but less attractive features of city life.
Stand on the site of the former Bridgefield pub in Cross Green Lane and within a few miles radius there’s a sewage works, factories, warehouses, rail maintenance depot, link road to a motorway and a former power station site awaiting redevelopment.
But for some residents the council’s latest proposals for the area are a blight too far.
Senior councillors last week decided to press ahead with a scheme to build a “recycling and energy recovery facility” – an electricity-generating incinerator – that will burn all the city’s household rubbish that cannot be recycled. The chosen location is the former wholesale market site in Pontefract Lane, Cross Green.
The final business case for the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) project is to be sent to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for funding approval, while council officers have been given the go-ahead to award the contract to Veolia ES Aurora Ltd, the company that will build and operate the facility.
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Environmental and economic concerns – it currently costs the council £64 a tonne to dump refuse at a waste tip – make landfill no longer sustainable.
Council bosses argue they have come up with the best solution to the problem and the best site.
There are those in Cross Green and surrounding areas that beg to differ and they are gearing up to fight the scheme as it makes it through the planning process.
Among them is Sarah Covell, a member of the No2 Incinerator group, who argues incineration is not the answer, fears the effect it will have on the neighbourhood and feels very strongly that the opinion of her community has been “ridden over roughshod.”
She said: “There cannot be many residents in Leeds who would wish for an energy from waste incinerator in their back yard.
“Our community may be officially classified as socially and economically deprived but it most certainly isn’t stupid.
“We know this facility will blight our community forever, force house prices to lower and keep many owner occupiers in negative equity unable to move away from a facility which they believe will damage their families’ health and wellbeing.
“If the emissions from the stack are inert, why does it have to be 90 metres high? If the by-products of combustion are so innocuous, why is the fly ash considered so hazardous it has to be buried underground in disused salt mines?
“If the process is so safe why do you need environmental permits and constant monitoring by the Environment Agency?
“Leeds sells itself as an innovative city, so why in the management of waste disposal is it so backward looking? No2 Incinerator can evidence with the council’s own figures that waste volumes in the city are decreasing year on year. So why commit ratepayers into a 25-year Private Finance Initiative contract?”
Sarah acknowledges that doing nothing is not an option but she fears the council is doing the wrong thing, saddling itself to a technology that she says could become outdated.
“Think also about technology which is changing rapidly” she said, “15 years ago a mobile phone was the size and weight of a house brick. Today a mobile smart phone has millions of times more functionality is a thousand times cheaper and fits in the palm of your hand.
“This innovation is also true of people’s attitude to waste disposal. Five years ago a plastic carrier bag in a supermarket was free, today charging for bags for life is all the fashion.
“Ten years ago produce was double wrapped and the wrappers disposed of in a black bin, today all packaging carries labels to show how and where to dispose of your waste, what is recyclable and what isn’t. Even my local chemist in East End Park offers an asthma inhaler recycling facility.”
She added: “No2 Incinerator has steadfastly and resolutely for the past three years opposed incineration as a method of residual waste disposal.
“Our goal of a zero waste community will not waiver regardless of the political party in power at Civic Hall.
“We will oppose the planning application to the very best of our ability and we will lead the opposition to the planning application from the front, and with Yorkshire grit and single mindedness and in solidarity with our fellow anti-incineration organisations we will win.
“If it means chaining myself to railings and acts of civil disobedience so be it. It’s time for a 50-year-old grandma to roll up her sleeves and say to Leeds City Council – ‘This waste ain’t for burning’.”
It’s clear the fight is on.
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