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Parties’ policies on incinerator suggest we’ll burn

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VOTE 2014 logoAhead of next week’s Town Hall elections, WALTER CRONXITE provides you with analysis of the “differences” and similarities between the major parties on the key policies on which you’ll be voting.

First up: THE INCINERATOR

THE ISSUE: As a society, we cannot continue to use land-fill for dumping our rubbish and waste. Government “green taxes” make it increasingly expensive. Environmentally, it is unsustainable.

Croydon’s Tories are fond of boasting how they have overseen an increase in recycling rates in the borough. Yet with the Viridor incinerator, they want to send more of the borough’s waste to be burned instead of recycled.

Often portrayed as an issue for wards in the north of the borough which are in the immediate “fall-out zone” from the incinerator, this is also an issue for the south of the borough due to the high volume of industrial traffic the building and fuelling of the incinerator will create.

Through the South London Waste Partnership, the four boroughs have committed to a contract with Viridor worth £1 billion over 25 years. Millions of tons of rubbish from the four boroughs, and from across south-east England, will be trucked in on polluting HGVs off the M25 and driven through Coulsdon, Purley and along the Purley Way to be burned at Beddington Lane.

Little, if any, on-site sorting of the waste will go on, so there is no way of knowing what toxic materials might be sent for incineration, with the particles and gasses being pumped into the atmosphere over Croydon.

The incinerator is to be built right next to what was supposed to be a cherished country park, and close to a site which is already home to hundreds of species of wildlife.

There is growing evidence that there is already an over-capacity of waste incinerators in the region, so a new one at Beddington may prove difficult to “fuel” and uneconomic to run.

THE BACKGROUND: Four years ago, the last time the people of Croydon had a chance to vote for who runs their council, the incinerator was a… coughs… hot topic.

Croydon Tories’ incinerator pledge from 2010: a promise broken soon after (click on the image to read it in all its duplicitous glory)

The Conservatives, who had run Croydon Council since 2006, accused the Labour Party of “scaremongering” over its claim that together with three other south London boroughs – LibDem-run Sutton and Kingston and Labour-controlled Merton – they were planning to build a massive waste-burning  incinerator near the borough boundaries.

Croydon’s Tories even produced leaflets dismissing the claims, and in Waddon ward the three Conservative councillors – Clare Hilley, Tony Harris and cabinet member Simon Hoar – handed out leaflets saying that they would oppose any incinerator being built “in or on the borders of Croydon”. A few months after being re-elected, Hilley, Harris and Hoar all voted in favour of building the incinerator at Beddington Lane.

Councillor Hilley has opted not to seek re-election, while Hoar and Harris are standing again in the borough’s most marginal ward.

THE 2014 CROYDON MANIFESTO PROMISES:

INSIDE CROYDON’S ELECTION VERDICT: The 2014 party policies may appear to be different, but the end result will be the same for Croydon: unless the legal challenge against the incinerator is successful, or Viridor get 11th hour cold feet, then the Beddington Lane incinerator will be built.

We can therefore expect an increase in the volume of polluting HGV traffic throughout the borough; and potentially toxic pollution will be pumped into the air, day-in, day-out for decades, and all over the nice new £1 billion Hammersfield shopping centre. Nice.

Inside Croydon’s recent coverage of the local elections:


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