Chiltern Green Party

Published on Wednesday 16 March 2011  in The Bucks Herald

A EURO MP has launched a scathing attack on plans to build a 300,000-tonne-a-year incinerator near Calvert.

Green Party MEP Keith Taylor, who represents South East England, branded the plans ‘yesterday’s answer to today’s problem’.

After he paid a visit to the site where energy firm Waste Recycling Group (WRG) hopes to build the controversial facility, he claimed he had received dozens of emails from people worried about the proposals.

Mr Taylor said: “Over in Brussels I’ve been getting a lot of enquiries from people worried about this incinerator, so I’ve come to find out more.

“I believe that we shouldn’t be taking mixed waste and burning it.

“I’m told that Aylesbury Vale has got a poor recycling performance, and I don’t think this is going to help.

“This is yesterday’s solution to today’s problem.

“I would see this as a battle for common sense.

“I’ll be talking with the council over the next week to voice my concerns.”

Last month bosses at County Hall rejected calls for a rethink over plans to send municipal waste to the new plant – if it gets planning permission.

WRG has submitted an application to build the plant at Greatmoor Farm.

The plans, which are currently out to public consultation, include a waste reception hall and storage bunker, a boiler hall, a turbine hall, a chimney stack and air-cooled condensers.

WRG says the plant will handle non-hazardous waste that would otherwise go into landfill.

A planning statement from the firm says: “This residual waste would be burned under controlled conditions to produce energy, in the form of electricity, for supply to the National Grid, and with the capacity to supply heat to future local developments in the vicinity.”

It also says bottom ash can be used in the construction industry.

Access to the plant will be from a new road, which would link it with the A41.

WRG has denied that the plant will lead to long term health plans, but campaigners say they are not convinced.

Maggi Campbell Keith, from protest group Stop Aylesbury Vale Incineration (SAVI), who showed Mr Taylor around the site on Friday, said: “While there’s any reasonable doubt, I reserve the right to believe it’s toxic, and fight it.

“There’s research that suggests if you live downwind from an incinerator it could have a huge impact on your health.”

But WRG says independent research shows no significant risk, and a paper published by the Health Protection Agency in September 2009 ruled effects would be ‘very small, if detectable’.

Buckingham MP John Bercow said yesterday he had received just one letter in favour of the application, and hundreds against it.

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