Cornwall waste incinerator

Cornwall Councillors have ruled out the possibility of adopting alternatives to controversial plans for a waste incinerator at St Dennis.

Cornwall Council’s Waste Development Advisory panel this week considered a report from independent consultants Eunomia, which suggested that £320m could be saved by abandoning the local authority’s incinerator plans.

The study, commissioned by anti incinerator campaigners, opposing plans for SITA’s Cornwall Energy Recovery Centre (CERC), claimed that the 30-year PFI contract is poor value and that the cost of withdrawing from the contract is less than the savings that could be made with alternative waste management strategies.

The Eunomia report says that the overall costs could be decreased by an average of £10m per year by moving recyclable materials out of the PFI contract and onto the open market.

However, an internal report to Waste Development Advisory panel from Cornwall Council claimed that the Eunomia proposal did not provide an alternative solution to the incinerator and concluded that no further work be done on pursuing alternatives.