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Council's planned incinerator could come to Sutton, Merton, Kingston or Croydon,


A controversial £1 billion incinerator is set to come to south London, with places in Kingston, Croydon, Sutton and Merton identified as possible sites.

The centre, which will cost close to £919 million, would also handle radioactive waste, clinical waste and sludge disposal facilities.

The details were exposed by south London Green Party campaigner Shasha Khan’s team, who deciphered the “compulsory procurement vocabulary”, a set of numbers which related to the types of waste processed.

Croydon Council is leading the procurement process for the South London Waste Partnership (SLWP), which also includes the boroughs of Sutton, Merton and Kingston.

The procurement document highlights three possible sites for the incinerator, including Factory Lane in Croydon together with Villiers Road in Kingston and Garth Road on the border of Sutton and Merton.

But it admits other sites would be considered.

The site would handle up to 222,000 tonnes of waste a year, with the council admitting it would be open to discussions for taking additional waste from “third parties” outside of the waste partnership.

Minutes from the SWLP meeting on June 22 this year showed the concern the boroughs had in expressing their “position on incineration”.

It added: “The Partnership’s evaluation criteria will reward high-performing, low emission, modern, sustainable technologies that offer residents value for money.

“All boroughs within the partnership are firmly against poor performing, outdated technologies such as old fashioned, mass burn incineration, which is poorly designed, visually intrusive and releases high levels of noxious emissions.”

The contract, which would last between 25 and 35 years, is funded by PFI credits from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

There have been expressions of interest from 26 private companies already.

Details of sites from the companies will emerge around October this year as the council opens consultations.

Croydon Council is set to select their preferred company in March 2011 with the site completed by April 2014.

• What do you think? Let us know by email here, phone the newsdesk on 020 8330 9555 or leave a comment below.

Comments(12)

Michael Ryan says...
10:17am Mon 6 Jul 09

Can Sasha Khan take a close look at the letter sent to me by Justin McCracken, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, dated 8 June 2009 in which Mr McCracken explained why the HPA haven't bothered to examine any rates of illness or premature deaths at electoral ward level around any incinerator?

Note that the lack of their examining any relevant data around existing incinerators hasn't stopped the HPA from telling Primary Care Trusts that incinerators don't harm health.

It's unfortunate that the London PCTs don't look at an electoral ward map of London which shows the 2002-2007 infant mortality rates and then they'll see that the high rate wards are associated with incinerators and the fourteen electoral wards which had zero infant deaths recorded in same six-year period were all free from incinerator emissions.

Saginaw County, in Michiganare examining infant death rates by US Census tract, ie their equivalent of electoral ward, and the census tracts exposed to toxic airborne emissions are the ones with very high infant death rates.

More on incinerators at www.ukhr.org

Kind regards,

Michael Ryan BSc, C Eng, MICE
Shrewsbury

timm says...
12:27pm Mon 6 Jul 09

Sloppy journalism, Peter. "Controversial" - can you please tell the readers why? I think they deserve to know.

Tony from Surbiton says...
1:46pm Mon 6 Jul 09

timm wrote:
Sloppy journalism, Peter. "Controversial" - can you please tell the readers why? I think they deserve to know.
Err... would you like one built next to your house?

That's why it's contraversial.

Shasha Khan says...
3:14pm Mon 6 Jul 09

Michael Ryan wrote:
Can Sasha Khan take a close look at the letter sent to me by Justin McCracken, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, dated 8 June 2009 in which Mr McCracken explained why the HPA haven't bothered to examine any rates of illness or premature deaths at electoral ward level around any incinerator?

Note that the lack of their examining any relevant data around existing incinerators hasn't stopped the HPA from telling Primary Care Trusts that incinerators don't harm health.

It's unfortunate that the London PCTs don't look at an electoral ward map of London which shows the 2002-2007 infant mortality rates and then they'll see that the high rate wards are associated with incinerators and the fourteen electoral wards which had zero infant deaths recorded in same six-year period were all free from incinerator emissions.

Saginaw County, in Michiganare examining infant death rates by US Census tract, ie their equivalent of electoral ward, and the census tracts exposed to toxic airborne emissions are the ones with very high infant death rates.

More on incinerators at www.ukhr.org

Kind regards,

Michael Ryan BSc, C Eng, MICE
Shrewsbury
Thanks Michael. I've been aware of your work on this. I agree with your assessment that it’s a public health scandal. The correlation between birth defect data and proximity to incinerators needs to be extensively analysed.

SV says...
3:43pm Mon 6 Jul 09

Excuse me, Shasha Khan said there was no plan for an incinerator in January. He backed the Tories over this.

Finally he has woken up and read the papers.

So it looks like the Labour Party by-election campaign was correct after all?

So much for tories saying it was all lies!

Watch the video from 4 months ago!

http://www.youtube.c
om/croydonlabour#pla
y/uploads/4/MyGy4Flh
olI

Arfur Towcrate says...
9:31pm Mon 6 Jul 09

I think it is disgusting that Croydon Council's Cllr Phil Thomas has tried to hide the truth from us. I hope that this whole issue becomes the big decider at next year's London council elections. If Croydon's Tories get re-elected, you can bet this daft, dangerous and expensive scheme will go ahead without question.

pat aitch says...
12:21am Tue 7 Jul 09

what a great place we will leave behind, for future generations

healthyeater says...
1:21am Tue 7 Jul 09

This really is unacceptable on many levels. More needs to be done to understand the impacts on long term health before carelessly setting in place such a problem for our children. More pressure needs to be applied by government and individuals to stop the waste. Industrial waste should be recycled to a much grater extent and the cost factored in to the project. Offices should be fined severely for failing to recycle / reduce waste and manufacturers should be heavily penalised for providng such heavy / unnecessary packaging.

David Petro says...
11:15am Tue 7 Jul 09

"Excuse me, Shasha Khan said there was no plan for an incinerator in January. He backed the Tories over this.
Finally he has woken up and read the papers."
I feel compelled to comment here and have just registered in order to do so.
The above is a gross misrepresentation of the position of Shasha and the Greens on Croydon.
As the primary author of the local Green Party 5000 word formal response to the South London Waste Partnership, I would make the following three points:
1) Croydon Greens sent a detailed and broad response to the initial sham consultation (back on 1st December 2008) expressing our serious concerns and predicting that incineration would emerge as the preferred option – unless they have been very coy about it, they did not (Labour primarily, but applies to all the other parties). Put up or shut up.
2) Labour jumped on our coat tails in the run up to the Waddon by-election but did so with all the subtlety and consideration of a bush fire. Our criticism of them was that their last minute scare mongering smacked of desperation. At NO POINT did we ever endorse the Tory support. I challenge them to find any evidence of this. Again, stop the dishonesty.
3) Labour cannot pretend to be the party of sweet smells here. Their European counterparts supported the rebranding of incineration as “energy from waste” and the government PFI money is coming from a Labour administration. Dishonesty again.

Libby Ralsuck says...
12:48pm Tue 7 Jul 09

Never mind, I'm sure Paul Burstow will save us all, he'll undoubtedly get his secretary to write a letter on his behalf, phew, I'm sure we'll all be grateful for that.

lizzyb says...
1:39pm Fri 17 Jul 09

The 'Sutton Scene' magazine is very misleading about this - it refers only to how much Sutton needs a 'modern' system for getting rid of easte, and howwe cannot keep using landfill. They are obviously hiding the fact that they want to build an incinerator! SUTTON AND CHEAM RESIDENTS - GET TOGETHER AND STOP THIS OUTRAGE!

Rael says...
10:02pm Sat 25 Jul 09

lizzyb wrote:
The 'Sutton Scene' magazine is very misleading about this - it refers only to how much Sutton needs a 'modern' system for getting rid of easte, and howwe cannot keep using landfill. They are obviously hiding the fact that they want to build an incinerator! SUTTON AND CHEAM RESIDENTS - GET TOGETHER AND STOP THIS OUTRAGE!
We have set-up an online petition to try to prevent the building of an incinerator anywhere in south London. You can find a link at www.stoptheincinerat
or.co.uk. All are welcome to sign.


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