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/