NO wonder Joe Anderson is screaming “rubbish!”.
The Mayor of Liverpool is fuming after discovering – via a press release – that a massive £1 billion deal has been done to send Merseyside’s growing mountain of domestic waste to the other side of the country.
Pressured by Europe to end the days of environment-unfriendly landfill dumping, we have given the job to to a French-owned firm that will transport all our refuse on a 300-mile round trip to the North East.
It is a 30-year-deal that will create hundreds of jobs on Teeside, jobs that have been “snatched from our grasp”, says the Mayor.
But nobody asked the leaders of the county's five councils about it, claims Uncle Joe, and to make matters worse, Liverpool is the biggest contributor to the purse of the quango which made the decision.
That would be Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority – paid for by council taxpayers – which has, for some years, grappled with what to do with the household rubbish generated by the 1.5m of us living in these parts.
The Wilton 11 Power Plant In TeesideThe problem is NIMBY-ism. Nobody wants a waste-handling facility in their area, even if it’s their own waste in the first place.
And so it is providing rich rewards for the big global players who realise where there’s muck, there are euros, dollars and yen.
Ironically, nearing completion along the Mersey, is a massive incinerator that will handle all the waste produced by Greater Manchester. From an eco point of view that 30-odd mile journey was seen as bad enough. This, though, beats even that.
The contract has been awarded to SITA UK, but that company is a subsidiary of French-owned conglomerate Suez Environnement (annual report only available in French) and backed by a Japanese investment company, I-Environment.
Efforts by several companies wanting to build so-called environmental friendly processing plants here on Merseyside have faced tough resistance from ward councillors and residents. But the clock has been ticking away on deadlines from Europe that impose a sliding scale of fines for continued use of landfill.
If Merseysiders don’t want proper facilities locally, the answer is simple: don’t create any rubbish. It has to go somewhere, and now ours will be heading to the new facility at the Wilton International site in Teeside. The construction will create hundreds of jobs and a further 50 permanent roles will be created once the plant is operational.
The Mayor said: “I feel the city and the wider city region has had a massive opportunity for major infrastructure investment snatched from its grasp and hundreds of potential jobs, which we desperately need, have gone to the North East.
“I want to understand why the city region leaders have not been involved in such a huge decision and why I, as the Mayor of Liverpool, with Liverpool contributing more to the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority than any other authority, had to read about the decision in a press release after the decision was made.
“I also want to understand how it can be more environmentally friendly and more cost effective to ship the waste of Merseyside all the way to Teeside some 150 miles away rather than dispose of our own waste locally."
RubbishBut the news is not so new to readers of the Middlesborough Evening Gazette or anyone else in the North East. Six weeks ago it reported the story, telling how two key facilities are to be built – a rail-loading waste transfer station in Merseyside and the new energy-from-waste facility on Teeside, both of which have planning permission and expect to be up and running by 2016.
According to the report, waste will be transferred into enclosed containers on Merseyside and arrive at Wilton International by rail, where it will be processed to generate electricity for the equivalent of 63,000 homes.
Mayor Joe added: “Although local authorities on Merseyside didn’t want the facility on their patch a bid was put in to have it in Ellesmere Port, which would have allowed people living in the city region to apply for the jobs created.”
One can only imagine much gnashing of teeth and possibly a duel halfway between the Municipal Buildings and the HQ of the MRWA in the new Neptune buildings at Mann Island.
