“I didn't give much credit to the cliche, but apparently it's true. People would much rather talk about the weather than an issue which they can actually do something about. Over a hundred people. Well, I hope there are letters...

Incidentally, did anyone else see the comments criticising 'career politicians' who work their way up the ladder from positions as advisors (or campaign managers?), made by Dhanda's old boss, Hazel Blears, who didn't oppose his sacking?”

“You did get to ask your first question, though, Ade, about more consultation if I recall. You just didn't get to ask more, but you can do that here, and maybe you've already covered some of them below.

A bit of engagement on the sites I mentioned below, especially the Glo'shire Boards, wouldn't hurt, either. Philip Booth posts on those boards quite happily. I recall that the Green Party even had the Stroud Coffee House message board for a while, and publicised it on Eddie Etheridge's site, but did anyone bother to use it? Hardly.

The authorities are quite petrified about being called to account online, especially publicly, but if enough of us did it, they'd have to engage, or take the shame.”

“I was at the meeting on Weds, and asked a couple of questions of the panel.

It was an interesting debate, and well chaired by Ian Mean, even if he did cut me off in my prime for my first question :-)

What was evident from the meeting though was that the general public need more information, and I think that the County is open to a bit of criticism here - their historic public engagement has left a lot to be desired - I'd travelled from the other side of the river because they haven't shown any inclination to hold any public meetings in the Forest.

Personally, I feel that the County are following a well trodden and rather monolithic path here in terms of their procurement of a residual waste solution, and that there are far cheaper solutions to be had. This may mean more, but smaller, facilties. I am a member of the Green Party, but I'm also an environmental scientist, and my day job involves the consideration of new waste technology (although not in Gloucestershire.)

I would personally be quite happy if we had a small localised plant a couple of hundred yards from where I live. It wouldn't bother me in the slightest. But then I've been round loads of plants over the last few years and understand well what the issues are. Anyone concerned about emissions from a modern energy from waste plant shouldn't live next to anywhere that sees any considerable amount of traffic, or any industry with any form of combustion process involved, or where anyone has any solid fuel heating, or have a barbeque, or let off fireworks - all of these can give rise to proportionately far greater emissions than you get from a modern energy from waste plant. EfW really is very stringently controlled to the point at where emissions are less than a tenth from any comparable industrial process.

My message to the county is not what you'd normally expect a Green Party member to give. I want MORE plants built. I want more plants built at a more local level because by doing so you open up all sorts of opportunities to deal with waste locally, to cut down on traffic and other impacts, to bring home to people the real impacts of waste management - and to develop opportunities for district heating, or providing energy for industrial processes. Do this right, and residual waste management through the use of energy from waste can truly be the best environmental option for the waste in question.

The County are looking for £92 million of PFI funding to support their bid. The centralised facility they are considering as one of their options will cost much more than this if they go down this route.

There are other options. I am aware of an advanced thermal technology available in 8000 tonne modules for around £1.25 million per module (it gets cheaper the more modules you build.) To meet the County projections of 160000 tonnes required capacity could be met for around £25 million in cost of plant alone. Even if you triple this sum to allow for site costs, we can still provide several smaller facilities for much less than the cost of a single large centralised plant. These plants are also more flexible, can take a wider range of wastes - and can be used to burn clean wood and other biomass if you run out of waste. A much more sensible solution. This modular option is currently being commercially proven, and I expect it to really open up the market within the next 12 months or so. I am also aware of small-scale gasification plant at this sort of size range.

The County need to be mindful of these other options. The FoE preferred option for mixed waste (mechanical biological treatment with anaerobic digestion of the organic fraction) doesn't perform very well, as the outputs include a considerable amount of contaminated 'stabilised' organic residue for which the only real route available is landfill.

We need to bite the bullet, and accept that some EfW is inevitable. What the County (and the Districts) also need to do though is ”

“Da Man has spoken. I'd always assumed that you were a Green Party councillor from your views, Venk, so I was staggered to find you're actually Conservative :eek:

It was notable that when asked how many people had subscribed to the MyZeroWaste initiative, out of that hundred plus people, only a handful of hands (interesting mental image) were raised. I haven't either, although I've read about it on the Gloucestershire Boards. We still recycle all we can, though, and if everyone did, it might make a huge difference to the landfill 'sitch'. Or else, maybe we'd realise that our waste is a drop in the ocean compared to what the commercial sector produce, and bring pressure to bear on that quarter?”

“Councils should not treat the public as children, equally council officers and councillors need to understand the various technical, community, and commercial components of waste managements - and give the correct facts and have a well-worked set of solutions and forward plan for dealing the waste produced by households and business.

Regrettably, the Gloucestershire strategy is muddled, over-politicised and does not meet sound community, commercial, or environmental criteria.

Public consultations have been abysmal and put up jobs.

Facilities such as that for in-vessel composting being set up only encourages collection of garden waste, which then has to be treated at twice the cost, as it would be mixed with food wastes.

As pointed out by readers - recycling in itself means nothing - what matters is the amount finally sent to landfill. In this, the county and district officers appear to be oblivious of the various collection methods, which improve collection efficiencies and increase landfill diversion.

Regards the incinerator, once again - this should be taken out of the political pot - MPs and councillors and the wider public should look up the national waste strategy which calls for extracting energy from waste which in turn contributes to reduction of fossil fuels and hence a nett contributor to carbon reduction.

Modern waste to energy plants are quite clean and an efficient means of disposal of material left over after other commercially sustainable means are employed to reduce, reuse and recycle.

For a nation with its long industrial history, it is the height of ignorance of a few vocal public joined by politicians bent on making political capital out of the discordance and propagating short term solutions which are economically and environmentally unsustainable and dangerous for our future.

County and districts have themselves to blame for the misinformation and discordance - they have failed to provide sound rationale for their decisions such as for mixed food/garden waste collections and in-vessel composting - missing out on the benefits of lower costs and environmentally more sustainable means of separate collection and treatment of such materials and generating energy via anaerobic digestion.

Politicians should engage constructively with the public but they should first of all, improve their own understanding of the various issues instead of simply threatening the public with the bogie of landfill tax and EU fines to push through their poorly reasoned strategy.”

“This is something I started writing for the consultation I mention below, but it wouldn't be displayed, any more than other (prefectly polite) contributions, so it's best posted here:

By all means, 'press the council to enhance recycling to 80% by the year 2020', but the elephant in the living room is the EU fine on landfill if that method of waste disposal is not tackled. The meeting in Quedgeley last night was characterised by a large crowd of people seemingly determined that nothing will be done to address the issue, and not only will we fail to meet EU targets for 2013 and 2020 (do a search for the much better article, with many useful comments, from September 25th - just put 'EU landfill fines' in the search box), but we won't even meet the targets that the Audit Commision think we should be able to reach in 2010. I'm not ignoring the presence of a significant number of Conservative supporters there to back up the county council, either, but as the meeting was organised by Parmjit Dhanda's PA (who just happens to be the Chairman of Haresfield Parish Council) in the first place, and no effort has been spared in election leaflets to claim, falsely, that an incinerator, and a specific incinerator at that, has been 'put forward to government' for dealing with the problem, there was always going to be a real concern that the meeting would be hijacked by a group that is having to resort to pretty desperate measures if they want their man to survive the next general election.

I have time for only a few Tory politicians, and Stan Waddington certainly isn't at the top of that very small list, but I listened to him giving solid responses to pretty standard concerns about waste recycling and incineration. On the potential risk of harmful emissions, all roads led back the Environment Agency, a government body responsible for ensuring that any scheme would *not* be a health threat (and speaking of roads, nobody thought to ask if an incinerator was likely to produce anything like as much noxious fumes as come off the M5 and local roads everyday). The EA also, as I understood it, were responsible for the landfill sites at Hempsted and Wigmoor Farm (which the council was apparently forced to sell by the government to 'private contractors' in 1992, losing control of much of the influx of waste, which, at Hempsted, is now 'obscuring May Hill'), so all efforts to lay blame at the county council's door ignore the government's role in all this, as well as the disastrous potential cost to the tax payer of doing nothing.

Recycling is a big issue (do I recall correctly, that the Citizen was going to have a full page article on waste management every month, or was that only to publicise the council's Great Gloucestershire Debate, which died a death well over a year ago?). I don't think we're nearly as well informed by the authorities, or our local paper, as we could be. That ignorance is eagerly exploited by politicians, especially the desperate ones. Don't be spoon fed the party line. Email the council. Email the MPs and the councillors. In particular, respond to the online consultation on ParmJit Dhanda's website that has received a grand total of one response so far, and that on the incinerator issue, in spite of the controversy this is supposed to have generated. It can't just be my comments that are withheld from display, so email PD's office if yours don't turn up, either.

Ask yourself why, also, if this is regarded as such a crucial issue, the Labour related Facebook site, 'No Incinerator In Gloucester', was created and then abandoned by it's 27 members? No demonstrations, no activities of any kind, but supposedly 27 people who are interested enough in this issue to join and then do nothing further. Would engagement in discussion lead to too much factual information stacking up on the page? Very likely.

Interesting question from Parmjit Dhanda about why the Conservatives opposed incineration at the last ele”

“I thoroughly agree with Bill Foster. It¿s not possible nor economical to recycle everything, so incinerators are the obvious solution. To use the burning of waste to produce fuel/electricity would make it economically viable and even desirable. Some Scandinavian countries have been running their cities¿ heating/hot water systems by this method for years! E.g. GRH could benefit and save money which could then be diverted to patient care.

We are far too dependent on foreign countries for our fuel; when there are shortages these countries will look after themselves and we will have to go without. Also, the prices will go up; already we have had more price increases and are playing more for our fuel than almost every other European country. All of this is absolutely disastrous for us and our economy. The more fuel we can generate ourselves the better.

Modern plants have sophisticated filtration systems, with back-ups in case of failure, which will eliminate toxins before the fumes are released into the atmosphere. There are many regulations in place which these plants will have to comply with, stemming from the Clean Air Act (of 1963?), which has since been updated.

It would appear that lorries from surrounding counties, Hereford & Worcester, and even Somerset, have been seen driving into Gloucester to dispose of their waste! I expect they pay for the privilege to do so, but this will give us a long-term problem. This should be looked at. Let them find their own solutions within their boundaries.”

“Councillor Stan Waddington is a forceful speaker... obviously used to being listened to and to getting his own way. At lasty night's meeting he stated (rather loudly) that no decision has yet been taken, either on the location or the method of wate disposal but, later in the meeting, as we discussed such issues as the farce of an ill-conceived design for M5 junction 12 (in the context of HGV traffic for Javelin Park) it became clear that our impartial councillor has already made up his mind and intends to have his way. An incinerator it shall be. Many of us left the Quedgeley meeting privately convinced that, whatever Waddington may say, this is to all intents and purposes a "done deal". The companies who will quote for this lucrative 25-year contract (which must be honoured and paid for, whatever future lessons teach us about the lunacy of building one giant "stovepipe" for the entire county) will naturally take their lead for the preferred technology from the example chosen by Waddington and his obedient council officers. If Waddington decides it is to be an incinerator, an incinerator it shall be... and woe betide anyone who stands in his way. Losing arguments is not Stan's style, whether he's right or wrong ! Setting aside the numerous arguments presented by everyone from retired nuclear engineers to tree-hugging Green Party members, the bottom line is that Waddington, an elected representative, is out of touch with the people. We don't believe him and we certainly don't trust him to subordinate his own views and bureaucratic convenience to the requirements of the public good. In short he should step down from local politics and give way to younger fresher blood more open to genuine honest debate. We were not impressed with the pretence of "outreach to the community", when we have seen for ourselves the lengths to which the Council went to avoid full and open public consultation. The last thing they wanted was inconvenient open discussion before key decisions had been taken (supported by a "carefully selected cross-section of views") and it was "too late" for further discussion. The real fiction is the threat of Government imposed "fines" of up to £150 a ton for not setting appropriate arrangements in place by some imminent date. Apart from the question of what our beloved Treasury might spend these millions on (even better pensions for civil servants perhaps), no Government would survive imposing such fines for any length of time simply because the people won't wear it. This is an artificial "Sword of Damocles" to wave over the heads of obedient citizens when convincing them that the Council is only doing its best to comply with the law. Funny how every time an embarrassing piece of official lunacy is exposed it's either the fault of Government or Brussels or some arcane Ministry procedure far beyond the control of Councillor Waddington. Ultimately this is about credibility, and many present at the meeting in Quedgeley believed Stan Waddington fails that test. Deny it as he might, I for one think that, whatever he says, everything points to Waddington having decided what will happen, whatever the electorate may think. He's determined to ensure his Council gets its hands on the government bribe which has been attached to a half-baked approach allegedly requiring a 25-year contract to be awarded and tethering us to a location, a technology and a policy which the majority simply don't believe in. THis is a massive financial and technical commitment for the next quarter of a century. Its effects will be visited upon our children. By the time the damage has been done, Waddington will be long forgotten. That's what is wrong with leaving too much influence in the hands of bigotted old men !”

“So, David Drew, and Parmjit Dhanda are now environmental experts. If they looked into this a bit more they would see thats its quite possible to have a clean buring process which will generate electricity. This is the most efficient option. It will also save on many house to house collections for recycling. At these types of plants worldwide seperation of metals etc is done on site so this all saves on seperate collections. You just have one collectio for all waste. The FOD also should go for this option rather than its current idiotic plans”

“all of northern gloucester is going to be in direction wind wise of any fallout fume wise smells, pus they would have to take in lardge amountsfrom out side our area to make it viable so more stink to already sstink from sewearage FARMat netherage every time there is south west breeze”