The Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TVERF) is due to be built at the Teesworks site in Grangetown, Redcar, and 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.
Activists have complained for years about plans for the huge rubbish burner, amid worries about its cost and environmental impact.
Councillors in Newcastle now face a vote this week on whether to withdraw from the £2.1 billion scheme, the contract for which could run for up to 40 years.
The council’s Liberal Democrat opposition will bring a motion to Wednesday’s full council meeting urging that the city pulls out of the incinerator partnership.
The Labour-run authority has previously rejected pleas to end its involvement in the TVERF, arguing that there is no viable alternative for dealing with non-recyclable waste and dismissing comparisons to the scandal of the early 2000s in which ash from the old Byker incinerator was found to contain potentially cancer-causing material.
But the fact that Labour no longer holds a majority of seats in the council chamber means that there is a real prospect of this week’s vote passing.
If that happened, the council’s Labour cabinet would then either have to make a formal decision to pull out of the TVERF or choose to act against the wishes of the full council.
Lib Dem councillor Gareth Kane’s motion states that the projected carbon emissions from TVERF would be the equivalent of 125,000 homes and describes incineration as the “second worst disposal route for waste after landfill”.
He adds that Newcastle’s domestic waste recycling rate has “plummeted” from over 42% to less than 25% in recent years and that the incinerator would be “counter-productive” when the city should be seeking to recycle more.
The motion states: “A long term contract such as TVERF would lock us into incineration for decades, as the seven councils would be obliged to provide a minimum amount of material of a suitable calorific value to burn.”
Viridor was recently confirmed as the chosen operator for the TVERF, which is due to be up and running in 2029, while a permit for the site has also been granted by the Environment Agency.
The TVERF project’s website describes it as a “sustainable, safe and reliable solution for treating the region’s general rubbish – reducing the need to send this waste to landfill in future”.
It is claimed that the scheme would save nearly 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year compared to landfill and generate enough electricity to power 60,000 homes.
Christine Herriot, Newcastle City Council’s director of operations and regulatory services, said last year that there was “not an alternative really that would be affordable and provide us with the sustainable outcomes that the council wants in terms of net zero”.
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