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| Council set to vote on double-sized Waste Incinerator for Coventry |
| Coventry City Council is set to take the first steps towards building a giant waste incinerator using the same Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding that was used to build the hospital. Councillors will vote on whether to spend an initial £450,000 on an ‘Expression of Interest’ to government for a new ‘Super – Incinerator’. Warwickshire and Solihull who intend sending some of their waste to Coventry will pay a part of this. |
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Twice the Emmisions:
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The proposed waste incinerator is likely to be around twice the capacity of the existing London Road waste burner and on the same site. The plant will produce twice the traffic, twice the emission of global warming and toxic gases and will cost over twice as much per tonne, in order to direct the pollution into the atmosphere. The building cost is likely to be around £175 million but financed via PFI it will cost an estimated £3/4 billion over about a 35 year period. |
No Consultation and no Waste Strategy: |
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Councillors have yet to develop a waste strategy, yet an incinerator would lock Coventry into the burning of the majority of its waste until around 2050. No public consultation or cost analysis have taken place on increasing The process would seem to have been 'steam-rollered' by central government as DEFRA have been very clear that that this round of PFI funding will be the last under the 2007 comprehensive spending review. PFI is an extremely expensive form of financing and traditional forms of paying for public infrastructure are likely to be re-introduced now that the Office of National Statistics Have instructed the government to include PFI repayments on its own balance sheet. Coventry could avoid the expensive PFI funding by waiting until nearer the present incinerator’s expiry date of 2021. The new PFI hospital has drained money from local health care. A new PFI waste incinerator will have the same effect on council finances and waste services. |
A Commitment For Many Years to Come:
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Coventry is in the bottom division for recycling in England. The council’s focus is on burning more waste at a far greater expense than the current cost, instead of providing for better recycling. This is going to be disastrous for the environment, local health and local traffic A baby born today will be at least 50 years old before Coventry finishes paying millions to finance an incinerator to mass burn our valuable resources. This is crazy when you see other countries already recycling 70% of their waste and we already have technologies for much cheaper and greener alternatives to deal with residual waste |
recycling or alternative methods of waste disposal despite other councils in the region rejecting incineration in favour of recycling and newer ‘greener’ alternatives for dealing with residual waste.