Campaigners celebrate Hurn waste incinerator U-turn (From Bournemouth Echo)

Campaigners celebrate Hurn waste incinerator U-turn

4:21pm Wednesday 9th December 2009

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CAMPAIGNERS are celebrating a council U-turn on plans to build a waste incinerator at Hurn.

County Hall waste chiefs have announced that they will no longer seek to build a mechanical biological treatment plant near Bournemouth Airport.

Councillors have decided against pursuing a loan of more than £80 million under the government’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to design, build and operate a plant to burn refuse-derived fuel.

Jim Biggin, the secretary of the Joint Community of Christchurch Residents’ Association, said: “Back in 2006 we told officers that if they concentrated on get ting recycling rates to increase, and if they entered into strategic relations with the private sec tor, such as the plant at Canford Magna, they would be able to meet all their requirements for legisla tion. “Instead, they chose to completely ignore us and have since spent something like £1.6m pursuing a chimera that has forced them to confront their own foolishness,” said Mr Biggin.

Dorset County Council’s environment chief, Cllr Hilary Cox, said increased recycling rates lay behind the council’s decision.

“At 48 per cent, we already have one of the highest recycling rates in the UK. Our joint waste management strategy aims to achieve 60 per cent recycling by 2015-16,” she said.

“By reaching this target we will obviously reduce the volume of waste that requires treatment and this has a negative impact for our original PFI business case.”

The facility would have generated energy by turning waste from the surrounding conurbation into pellets to be burned in an incinerator.

Environmentalist, Angela Pooley, the co-ordinator for East Dorset Friends of the Earth, said the decision not to pursue the incinerator was “wonderful news”.

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