In the run up to Election Day, our local political candidates sound serious about the protection of the local environment and reducing councils’ carbon footprint and waste to landfill.
Why then, have they allowed the two remaining bidders for the contract to “deal” with BDR’s waste – (Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster Councils) -to choose Bolton Road, Manvers, Rotherham as their preferred site. Simply because of its central proximity between the three towns is a not sufficient criterion for its siting there.
The Corus steelworks site at Aldwarke, Rotherham was assessed as being a more suitable site by BDR’s consultants and Land Assessors. This site would allow Corus to harness energy from waste (EfW) thus reducing the company’s consumption of energy from conventional energy sources (Corus is one of the top two UK consumers of electricity). This in turn would reduce the cost of steel produced at the plant thereby making it a more viable and competitive proposition. Thousands of jobs there would be safeguarded, as a result.
Furthermore, Aldwarke is an industrialised brownfield site, owned (and made available to BDR) by Corus for energy production from waste thereby eliminating the need to purchase the land. The site is served both by rail and canal and this would allow the transportation of waste by environmentally friendly means. The canal would enjoy a long-awaited renaissance. The current BDR plan is to transport the annual waste output of the three councils (an estimated 200,000 tons of black bin waste a year– 600 to1,000 tons a day plus unaccountable tons of industrial waste types) by road between the three boroughs and the Manvers site.
The alternative would provide BDR, and Central Government, with an ideal opportunity to further reduce its carbon footprint whilst realising its current platitudes of saving jobs in British industry.
The siting of an EfW plant adjacent to a country park (costing millions of pounds of regeneration funding), food production and other industries, and meters away from a local hospital, schools and housing, merely at the whim of the two remaining bidders, and the capitulation of BDR, has a certain whiff – even before the proposed plant gets under production.
What our elected representatives have not told the electorate is that the £77.4m PFI credits from DEFRA for this project does not cover the full cost of the project, and that this will need to be supplemented by private equity and public funding through local taxes.
As the Labour Policy for the forthcoming General and Local Elections states:
“…fairness is as much about how people are treated as it is about final outcomes.”
It’s time for the electorate of the Dearne and Don Valleys to demand fairness and consideration from all local electoral candidates, and prospective MP’s, on what is currently being proposed for the Manvers site without due consideration being given to the Aldwalke site and its many benefits.
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