Council bosses claim they have no viable alternative to sending huge amounts of Newcastle’s waste to a massive incinerator in Redcar.
Activists have long called for the controversial Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TVERF) project to be abandoned, amid worries over the vast rubbish burner’s health and environmental impacts.
Once operational in 2029, the TVERF will take up to 450,000 tonnes of waste every year from seven of the region’s councils – Newcastle, Durham, Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, and Stockton.
As critics’ concerns persist about the scheme, councillors on Tyneside were told last week that there was not a realistic fallback option for dealing with rubbish left over after recycling has been removed.
“Not an alternative”
Christine Herriot, Newcastle City Council’s director of operations and regulatory services, told a scrutiny panel last Thursday that there was “not an alternative really that would be affordable and provide us with the sustainable outcomes that the council wants”.
A deep dive report conducted by members of the council’s climate change committee last year warned that the TVERF could become a “distraction from increasing recycling” that risks locking Newcastle into a rubbish-burning mentality and missing out on more environmentally-friendly means of waste disposal as technology develops.
The contract to build and run the £300 million incinerator, due to be awarded next year, is expected to run for 29 years – with the option to extend for a further eleven.
A group of health workers staged a protest outside Newcastle Civic Centre this September to urge the council to pull out of the deal, while the BBC reported in October that so-called “energy from waste” incinerators in the UK are now producing the same amount of greenhouse gases per unit of electricity as if they were burning coal.
Overview and scrutiny committee
At last week’s meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee, Liberal Democrat Wendy Taylor said: “Our concern is that if something happens in the next five, ten, 20 years with new technology we will be stuck with this contract dealing with waste that could be dealt with in a better way.”
Opposition colleague Coun Mark Mitchell also questioned why the council was locking itself into such a long deal, saying that “nobody is trying to predict what the market will be in 35 years” in industries such as electric cars because of how rapidly technology evolves.
Herriot replied: “While you might have views about the TVERF, there is not an alternative really that would be affordable and provide us with the sustainable outcomes that the council wants in terms of net zero.”
She added: “We are not being bound into this. It has been a well thought out decision that the council has made and committed to. We are part of the project and we have been working on this for at least three years, and we have considered the alternatives.
“We don’t want to put waste into landfill – that is the least environmentally friendly option and we have produced quite significant responses in terms of the councils that have been raised [about the TVERF].”
The committee was also told that the lengthy contract for the incinerator was needed to give its operator “certainty” over the supply of materials and that a shorter deal would not be affordable.
The concern about the TVERF has also brought back painful memories of the scandal that saw the city council prosecuted in 2000 when ash from the old Byker incinerator was found to contain potentially cancer-causing dioxins.
However, local authority bosses have insisted that the Redcar site will operate strict pollution controls and say its operation will mean more than 90% of Newcastle’s waste not being sent to landfill.
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