Transition Bedford

I was having a chat with an environmental impact assesor and these were some thoughts, I would be interested if anyone could enlighten me on some of the issues bought up? cheers

I’ve only had a chance to look at the Executive Summary of the Environmental Report.
It’s obviously going to be a fairly large development which will always have some adverse effects, but it is on what is essentially a brown-field site coupled with restoration of the remainder of the site. So that’s probably OK if the site is planted and managed as is being suggested (unless you live in the farm next door to it, I guess!).

Key concerns are traffic and air quality. Traffic wise, I presume that in the wider context you would be replacing trucks going to landfill sites with trucks going to the power generation plant. There probably would probably be a bit more traffic overall due to mutitple-handling (i.e. I assume that waste collected by a councils would get taken to central depots, from where it would be collected by the power plant HGVs; materials would also be taken out of the power generation plant). Although I imagine that the HGVs would be able to carry more waste per journey the your standard refuse truck. The report says that it WON’T be taking waste from London. This needs to be a planning condition.

Air quality wise, I don’t know how ‘good’ the levels set by the Waste Inceneration Directive are, or whether there has been monitoring of the effects (health or ecological) of emissions from incineration plants that work to those levels. I assume there must have been because there are lots of these facilities around now, but it is not my speciality. Perhaps that it is evidence that you should ask for?

The report states that the company are in negotiations with nearby companies (CentreParcs included) to provide heat to them, making the plant a combined heat and power facility. Personally, I think that actually providing heat to nearby businesses should be a precondition of getting permission – if that can’t be organised then the proposal (in this location) should not be deemed ‘viable’: that way the maximum benefits are gained.

I am slightly concerned that on the drawings the piles of treated ash (for re-use as aggregate) appear uncovered. Not sure that’s a great idea. Maybe it just looks that way on the schematic.

I would also want to know the chemical composition / safety of the ash and also the final waste materials (e.g. from the scrubbers, ash that can’t be reused): ultimately these will end up on land or in a landfill somewhere else, so they need to be appropriate or able to be disposed of safety.

It will also need to be made clear to the council that having such a facility should not distract from the main task of reducing waste overall and increasing recycling rates. There are a whole raft of EU and national targets about waste management that authorities need to be working towards (including reducing landfill, hence why incinerators for dealing with non-recylable waste are increasingly attractive), but it is always worth reminding them!

Overall, personally I am not against power-from-waste plants in principal, but I am not an air quality expert and I guess that’s the main area of concern. The big picture is that waste has to go, and therefore have adverse effects, somewhere, so it would seem to make sense to get as much benefit out of it as possible. In terms of climate change, I do not think that the effects of burning waste would be that much worse (if at all) than those from the release of methane from landfill, and obviously by burning waste you reduce the need to burn raw fossil fuels (it would produce enough power to supply Bedford and Marston Vale, so a decent chunk). And if we’re running out of landfill space over here, we shouldn’t just ship it overseas and pass the problem on to someone else.