Harrogate Borough Council Planning Committee meets on Tuesday 14th February at 2pm to consider whether to object to the Allerton Park incinerator. The meeting will be in the Council Chambers at Crescent Gardens, Harrogate.
The facility at the current Allerton landfill and quarry site would treat up to 320,000 tonnes of household waste per year and recover recyclable materials and energy from it.
Amey Cespa is the preferred contractor for the project subject to planning approval of the specific proposal.
AmeyCespa have put forward a number of technologies:
- A Mechanical Treatment (MT) plant designed to receive and treat residual municipal waste from York and North Yorkshire. The plant will automatically screen out organic matter and recover metal, paper and plastic for recycling.
- An Anaerobic Digestion (AD) plant to treat the separated organic waste. The plant will produce a biogas which will generate around 1.1 MW of renewable ‘green’ electrical power.
- An Energy from Waste (EfW) plant to treat the waste which remains after separation of the recyclables and treatment of organic waste. The EfW plant will produce steam to feed an electricity generating turbine that will generate around 24MW of power. Spare heat which the EfW generates could be supplied to local external customers if a market can be established.
- An Incinerator Bottom Ash (IBA) plant to process residual ash into an aggregate which can be used in construction.
Chairman of the North Yorkshire Waste action group (NYWAG), Steve Wright said:
It is vital that anyone opposed to the scheme and who can be available on that day should attend the meeting and join a peaceful protest beforehand – strident opposition may hurt our cause. Be there about 1pm. A strong presence could make the difference between the planning committee raising no objection or coming out against.
At present Harrogate’s planning officer has raised several serious concerns that he wants addressing, but is recommending the planning committee raises no objection if those concerns are dealt with.
The recommendations of Harrogate Borough Council can be found here HBC-recommendation.pdf
Steve Wright added:
We believe that many Harrogate councillors are against the scheme, so we think that a strong turn out of members of the public could be the difference between Harrogate’s backing for our cause and taking the easy option of raising concerns but not voicing opposition.
Concerns can also be expressed to ippu.ippu@harrogate.gov.uk
Campaigners hope that gaining Harrogate Borough Council’s opposition to the scheme would go a long way towards helping achieve their aim of getting the application decided by an independent planning inspector.
Surely this is nonsense.
Just down the road at South Milford Mytum and Selby Recycling has a proposal to convert residual waste from various sources to make ethanol fuel for transport at no cost to the Yorkshire Council Tax Payers is about to start design. This will treat over 500,000 tonnes per year of residual waste after recycling and produce ethanol for transport in a totally enclosed facility. Then to add further metal to this a little further down the A1 at Goole another facility is to be built which will take over 750,000 tonnes per year of waste again to make biofuels for transport. So why does North Yorkshire CC and York City want to waste money on this ludicrous proposal? This process approved for use in Holland Malta VietNam Morocco and the USA and the Gulf States is as old as the hills and environmentally clean and produces no smoke or harmful CARCINOGENIC residues.
I understand that North Yorkshire CC attended a presentation by Mytum and Selby and their partners at a Selby Council Meeting in 2009 when they agreed that the proposal was suitable, and did not create a nuisance. So why have they gone back on their words in Harrogate?