GM Waste Ltd and their partners Bolton Council have started the Public Relations process designed to convince local people that the re-vamped waste incinerator at Raikes Lane, opening some time in the new year according to a recent news item in BEN, is going to be good for them.
Visitors and the Press will be told how this wonderful 'state of the art' machine will make cheap electricity from waste and will be as environmentally friendly as modern science will permit, cutting pollution and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The reality will, however, be very different. Incineration of waste is itself a very wasteful process, costing many times more in terms of energy and raw materials than the alternatives of waste reduction and recycling, options that were never properly examined by Bolton Council before they gave planning permission for this project.
Despite new regulations, the modified incinerator would still be legally permitted to discharge around a quarter of its previous high level of deadly dioxins, and in the past the old incinerator frequently exceeded its permitted emissions limits.
Preliminary tests by Environmental Health have shown soils in the area around the incinerator to be contaminated with dioxins at a level which in Austria would require them to be labelled with a warning sign "Attention contains dioxins/furans (forbidden for use on children's playgrounds)". Yet Bolton Council have ignored requests from Friends of the Earth and others to carry out a comprehensive survey of the area in order to determine the dangers of adding to existing levels by authorising the incinerator to operate for a further quarter century.
This raises the question - which is more important to Bolton Council, consideration of the implications for the future health and peace of mind of Bolton people, or avoidance of embarrassment to an enterprise in which they retain a commercial interest?
Dennis Watson
Millgate
Egerton
Bolton
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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