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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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15th February '09
Owing to the snow the Full meeting of Torridge District Council was cancelled last week and instead we had an ‘informal’ one which saw a presentation by Devon County Council on their plans for a new £40 million incinerator at Barnstaple – which will take waste from Bideford and Torridge. We heard how, with landfill sites becoming rapidly full, a new method of getting rid of our waste has to be developed. If something isn’t done then fines of £150 per tonne of landfilled waste could be levied which works out to £32 per annum for every household in Torridge by 2020. Out of many different possibilities the county engineers have gone for Residual Waste Treatment which, according to them, produces emissions within current limits. Questions were invited and came thick and fast. Peter Hames of Northam asked where the ash from the incinerator would go and was told a special waste dump in Gloucestershire would take the highly toxic material whilst the bulk of the ash would still have to go to landfill sites or could be used for aggregate. In answer to one question we were told the plant would run 24 hours a day 365 days a year on a through put of 60,000 tonnes – though this was qualified when a member raised the need for maintenance. When asked about any dangers associated with the scheme the engineer answered by pointing out that such incinerators were ‘the second most highly controlled industrial facilities after nuclear power stations’ which caused councillor Chris Leather to say that surely this highlighted how dangerous they could be! The spokesperson countered this by saying that councillor Leather would be at more risk dancing around a November 5th bonfire than being close to this burner – a slightly surreal analogy! Councillor Sam Robinson asked about failsafe mechanisms given human fallibilities but was told the answer was so technical he would be sent the reply in writing – which didn’t satisfy councillor Miranda Cox who thought the company running the incinerator (it is to be run by a private firm) would surely put profits before health issues. All the way through this presentation we kept hearing about partnership working between Devon, North Devon and Torridge councils but Torridge’s Leader James Morrish rather torpedoed this when he pointedly asked where had this joint approach been for the last 18 months as he couldn’t recall it? I pointed out that for most councillors this was the first time we were hearing about the scheme and its ramifications for Torridge – indeed Tesco (who will get cheap heat from the plant) clearly knew about it far earlier than we did. The final word came from Torridge’s chairperson councillor Margaret Brown who asked ‘What happens if Torridge say no to this scheme?’ – which left the county engineers looking totally nonplussed and only able to reply ‘It wouldn’t be helpful.’ I must congratulate Torridge for holding this meeting in public – the same presentation in North Devon was held behind closed doors for some reason. I suspect the whole thing will drag on for many months yet and will become political – if only because the plan is being put forward by North Devon Lib-Dem Brian Greenslade – yet his fellow Lib-Dems in Plymouth have just strongly come out against a similar plan in their area – and no-one is quite certain where the Tories sit on the issue yet. I will probably return to this topic next week as many fascinating points came out e.g. frequency of waste collection in Bideford and the need for extra waste sorting by Bideford households.
I assume we all enjoyed the snow in different ways – personally I just liked walking across the unspoilt areas and hearing the crispness under my feet. One odd thing did strike me, however, and it connects to a recent news item about global warming. As the world heats up so ice melts and large areas that have previously acted as a reflecting mirror to solar radiation have disappeared. A scientist has suggested that if we all had white roofs they would be a powerful tool in combating global warming. I must admit I thought the idea rather far fetched but having seen every roof on the houses in Londonderry estate covered in snow the appearance was actually very attractive – and if it does help stop climate change then all the better!
Torridge District Council is reviewing the Bideford Conservation Area using funds provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The first phase of the appraisal has now been completed and a few new areas have been identified as being worth adding to the existing conservation area. These include Southview Terrace in Northdown Road (the back-to-front houses), the eastern side of Northam Road itself up until Meadowville Road plus the Old Rectory site. The town council planning committee have supported these ideas which should help save some of the best bits of the town for future generations to experience and appreciate. Bideford was lucky in the 1960s and 1970s when many other towns (Barnstaple springs to mind for some reason!) were engaging in wholesale destruction and literally rubbishing their own history Bideford lost relatively few buildings. Agreed there are some pretty awful developments from those years (no prizes for guessing which ones I am referring to) but overall the integrity of Bideford’s built environment survived to a large extent – and for that we should be very thankful.
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