Waste disposal / Bellozanne/Incinerator

Let’s look at the facts:

1. Our current incinerator is old & produces nasty emissions.

2. It had a 25 year lifespan, but was out of date not long after installation.

3. It consists of three separate streams, one of which has c.12 years lifespan left.

4. It produces about 30,000 tons of toxic ash each year.

5. We currently put cardboard, paper, wood, TV sets, rubber tyres, plastic (bottles etc), carpet etc in it. Even metal cans that don’t burn.

6. Result? Flue emissions are not compatible with EU regulations and ash disposal is expensive.

7. And it’s getting unreliable.

So what do we do? Buy a new incinerator for £100 million that’ll be out of date before it’s commissioned.

Oh yes – it’ll have expensive flue cleaning – but it’s still yesterday’s technology. As usual, we’ve copied the UK – who are technologically in the stone age regarding waste disposal.

Statements by the Chief Minister and Minister for Transport & Tech Services were untrue when they said none of the new technologies were sufficiently proven. Some have been running for decades. Sen Walker even employed one of his tricks – “if any new technology was proven we’d use it. Sadly, none are” – or words to that effect.

The point is, we had a choice – buy new technology that would produce less ash (currently 30,000 tons a year into La Collette)  be cleaner and enable us to recycle more – or use old-fashioned boilers that will likely require the burning of diesel or similar to keep flue temperature at optimum – and reduce our ability to recycle.

Let’s face it, if you remove tyres, cardboard, plastic, paper, etc there’s not a lot left that will burn. You need a different type of kit to deal with the residue.

Sadly, not only didn’t we buy that, but we paid way over the odds for it.

On my desk I have a quote from a major (they manage the USA’s nuclear arsenal) engineering firm offering the new technology for £68m – or the old fashioned kit (like we’ve just bought) for £60m. We paid £100m.

Who cares? It’s only £40m of taxpayers’ money wasted!

Something’s fishy here, and I hoped to persuade States members to hold an Inquiry to find out what went on.

Unfortunately, I was out of office & the new members didn’t know how to go about getting a result.