Friday, December 14, 2012

Prosiect Gwyrdd charges £110 MORE a tonne to burn our rubbish

CARDIFF COUNCIL TO PAY £166 A TONNE while other Councils pay only £56

Prosiect Gwyrdd Rip off to pay far over the going price for Waste Incineration.

CARDIFF COUNCIL TO PAY £166 A TONNE while other Councils pay only  £56 
and to pay this rip off price for 25 years!

Prosiect Gwyrdd (Project Green) rip off applies to all partnership councils  
  1. Cardiff Council, 
  2. Caerphilly County Borough Council, 
  3. Monmouthshire County Council, 
  4. Newport City Council and 
  5. Vale of Glamorgan Council.
The official survey by WRAP - 2012 Gate Fees Report *- finds that
the median gate fee for energy-from-waste incineration is £65 per
tonne The lowest PFI-type incinerator contract has gate fee of 
£56 /tonne In comparison PG calculated a 25-contract based 
on 2010 cost levels of £36.6 Million for 220 000 tonnes 
supplied to the incinerator (transport costs borne by 
the Councils). This means they were ready to pay £166 
per tonne.

Why did PG think that was a good deal?  Not just that they 
wanted an incinerator built in South Wales, but it was 
based on PFI-costs in England, which have high bank
 charges.  Their scheme would rip-off Council 
taxpayers and provide cut-price capacity for 
businesses at similar rates to those reported by WRAP
Face of Prosiect Gwyrdd
Ian Loyd Davis

Prosiect Gwyrdd excuse the
25 yr-long contract by saying
 we get a better price! 
The officers even guessed 
a 10-yr contract would be 
twice the price, before 
the WRAP figures came 
out.  The evidence of 
these figures is of a 
worse price. Former PG
Steering Cttee member, 
Caerphilly's Colin Mann, 
recently repeated this, 
so did he ever ask for evidence? Seems cllrs are 
being severely  'mislead' by Prosiect Gwyrdd people. 

No wonder Viridor is so keen to build an incinerator/gold 
mine in Cardiff and Veolia trying to build in Newport

The PG comparative cost per tonne is available f
rom the annual 25% subsidy (index-linked )
 approved by WAG of £9.124M in April 2009 
(based on secret OBC ‘Health Check’ figures of 2010),
 making £36.5M total. For the 220 000t pa, this gives
 £166 per tonne, higher than the maximum £131/t 
for new PFI-incinerators given below.  WRAP warns
 that the £166 /t gate fee for PG may not be directly
 comparable with those at older incinerators
 (£32 - £101 /t).  Still £166 /t compares badly with 
comparison with Defra-agreed PFI schemes of 
£56-102 /t (median £76 /t).
EfW                 Pre-2000 facilities                   £64  median                            £32 to £75 range 
 Post-2000 facilities                 £82                                          £44 to £101
                         Defra Gate fee data [9]
             <200kt nbsp="nbsp" span="span" to="to">
  200kt to 300kt                       £76                                          £56 to £102
                         350kt to 450kt                        £68                                          £57 to £78
 [9]  Defra information on PPP/PFI projects that have reached contract closure in the last 5 years or are about to reach contractual close in the next 12 months.
*Download the full report - WRAP Gate Fees Report 2012

The Gate Fees report aims to raise price transparency and, 
through improving the flow of information, enhance the
 efficiency with which the waste management market
 operates.  A lack of market information may reduce a 
local authority's ability to make informed decisions on
 waste management options in terms of both economic
 and environmental costs.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Urgent Notice to Cardiff Residents – New Consultation on Viridor Incinerator

Urgent Notice to Cardiff Residents – New Consultation on Viridor Incinerator 


You may have seen the Public Notices that appeared in Splott and Cardiff Bay recently. Viridor's Incinerator development is now at a critical stage. Thanks to pressure from Cardiff-Against-the-Incinerator, Cardiff Council are now complying with planning law and consulting residents on legally-binding conditions set out in the planning permission.

This letter contains CATI's advice on how to respond to the consultation. Because of the conditions on the consultation, the Council will disregard direct challenges to the overall planning permission, but we argue for being tough on the conditions.

We suggest you object on some of the following points:

1. The Consultation is difficult to understand and poorly publicised. Cardiff Council were found guilty of “maladministration” in previous public consultation on the incinerator. You can complain the Council have done little better in informing the public this time.

2. Viridor started development of the incinerator on July 20th, the day after their new application was published! This is a breach of planning law.  Say Viridor's actions show they cannot be trusted to build and run the incinerator in accordance with the law.

3. The site is still contaminated from its previous occupants. Conditions 3 and 4 of the planning permission says Viridor should have cleaned it up, but they haven't. You can object that Viridor's “report on remediation”, which proposes no clean-up in advance, is inadequate. Object too, to their plan to simply throw away soil they dig up rather than process and re-use it.

4. Issues around the thousands of tonnes of toxic incinerator ash are unresolved. The plan is to process the toxic “bottom ash” at the incinerator building – this contradicts planning condition 23, which forbids them to process hazardous waste. Object that this contradiction means the plant cannot operate, so the whole planning permission should be declared null and void!

5. The incinerator site is on a flood plain. Extreme storm conditions are becoming worse and more frequent, making the “100 year” flood prediction inadequate. You can say the real flood-risk should be considered under Condition 11 – especially since the toxic ash stockpile could become flooded and spread widely over the surrounding area.

6. The conditions don't solve “satisfactorily” the inadequacies and contradictions in the planning consent (Echo 25 July). Say the Council must force a stop to construction work.

Feel free to select from these points and to add others. Help us demand that the Council make Viridor comply with the law!

Your local Councillors can provide you with further help, but responses need to be in the hands of Cardiff Council by 14th August to Development Manager, City Hall CF10 3ND].
E-responses to developmentmanagement@cardiff.gov.uk; view documents on-line (no easy read!) at http://planning.cardiff.gov.uk/online-applications/ ref. 10/00149/E, Trident Park.

---------------------- cardiffagainsttheincinerator@gmail.com ------------------ 1 August 2012 -------------------
phone: 07947 214169 or 07817 513610 ---- http://cardiffagainsttheincinerator.blogspot.com/