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15 November 2011
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Leading US trade union-bashing company Covanta has pulled out of a huge incinerator project near Merthyr Tydfil, just as the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) was about to hold public hearings into planning permission writes Max Wallis researcher for Friends of the Earth Cymru.
The full story can be found at the South Wales Without Incineration Network site.
The IPC was to decide on planning permission because the project exceeded the onshore power generation threshold of 50 megawatts.
Covanta's proposed waste-to-energy incinerator at Brig-y-Cwm would have been the largest in Europe, handling 750,000 tons of waste each year.
The pull-out followed a huge community campaign co-ordinated by the United Valleys Action Group, which led to 14,000 people registering their objections with the IPC.
The campaign against Covanta in Wales dated back to January 2009, when news leaked out of secret dealing between the company, civil servants and local politicians.
A freedom of information request has since forced disclosure of documents covering about two years of discussions between Covanta and the International Business Wales (IBW) office headed by Welsh Assembly government minister (and then Plaid Cymru leader), Ieuan Wyn Jones.
IBW officials had approached Covanta and assured the company that the Welsh government's waste disposal strategy would leave 30 per cent for incineration in a single large plant, then earmarked for Splott in Cardiff.
Later, IBW talked up an all-Wales "solution" for non-recyclable municipal waste, much of it to be moved by rail to feed the Brig-y-Cwm mega-incinerator.
Another disclosed document showed Britain's vice-consul in New York assuring Covanta that the company was considered to be "a pretty strategic firm that the UK wants to cultivate" because of its leading position in the energy-from-waste business.
In September 2008, Jones made a trip across the Atlantic to meet Covanta chiefs. The report of his visit shows that he agreed to give Covanta help in drawing up a case and making contacts.
In October 2008, an IBW briefing for Welsh government ministers painted the same rosy picture. It was prepared with help from Covanta. This was six months before the beginning of a public consultation period on a waste strategy for Wales. Jones's Cardiff office organised a "very high level meeting" on October 20 the basis of the briefing.
After negotiations with local authorities, the strategy proposed small incinerators supplying heat and power at high thermal efficiency.
Critics argued that very high recycling levels are achievable within a decade, which would knock back the 30 per cent incineration stream.
It now appears that the wish to attract Covanta's £400 million incinerator "investment" was decisive in shaping the Welsh Waste Strategy, deferring the 70 per cent recycling target and allowing large incinerators.
But in order to satisfy European Union procurement rules, the Welsh government has had to encourage other companies to bid by offering a 25-year contract with a 25 per cent subsidy of the gate fee paid by county councils.
These incentives are being offered through Project Gwyrdd (Green), a waste disposal consortium of five south-east Wales local authorities.
This smells like PFI, which the main political parties in Wales say they oppose.
So the contract has been dressed up as a DBFOM (design, build, finance, operation and maintenance) private-public partnership.
Civil servants pushed the consortium idea to insulate councils from public pressure.
Disclosed documents show that Covanta had been contacting chief council officials from Cardiff to Flintshire, as well as Merthyr Tydfil.
Great care was taken to make sure that Welsh government ministers would not be seen as promoting Covanta.
For example, at the press launch of the project on February 2 2009, officials decided Ieuan Wyn Jones was "unable to meet the company" as originally programmed. After receiving the disclosed documents, local politicians went into battle.
They had also received information about Covanta's US convictions for pollution offences and the way it treats trade unions there.
Merthyr and Caerffili councils both came out against the Brig-y-Cwm scheme, not least because they believed the chimney emissions and other pollution risks would keep prospective employers out of the area.
They weren't fooled by the "bribe" of 500 temporary construction jobs or the mirage of £400m investment that had had swayed the then Wales first minister Rhodri Morgan, sustainable development minister Jane Davidson and their colleagues.
In their July 2009 response to the proposed Welsh Waste Strategy, Friends of the Earth Cymru pointed out that the Welsh government had utterly failed to consider the climate change implications of the Covanta project.
For example, the greenhouse gas emissions from this single incinerator would include one million tons of carbon dioxide each year - nearly 25 per cent more than the current total emissions from all metal production in Wales.
Friends of the Earth Cymru used Treasury figures to calculate the climate change damage at more than £1.6 billion. Because recycling and composting remove much of the paper, wood and short-cycle carbon, the incinerator would have been largely dependent on plastics, which are fossil fuel-based, and other wastes for energy generation, and so could not reasonably be described as "renewable," regardless of company propaganda.
Where now for the Welsh Waste Strategy?
The new Welsh government has been saddled with a pro-incinerator policy at huge cost.
Project Gwyrdd has lost its favoured bidder Covanta, reducing the waste scheme shortlist to two.
No schemes based on safer, cleaner technologies have come forward, only those involving large incinerators - Viridor in Splott (Cardiff) and Veolia in Llanwern (Newport).
Both schemes are in the spotlight and subject to widespread local objections.
A final decision might not be taken for up to a year. Inspired by victory over Covanta, campaigners will use next May's local elections to remind council candidates that they should represent local people, their health and their environment - not profit-hungry companies and their shareholders.
Category: Campaigns