Public meeting on plans for energy plant on A505 - clashed with Great British Bake Off!

There were some very good and well informed questions at the public meeting at Thriplow last night on the proposals to build a "waste to energy" plant at the Pet Crematorium along the A505. 

There were about 20 people present - I think if it hadn't been head to head with the GBBO final there would have been more, but the audience was certainly well informed.

The planning application  is from Vetspeed, and is to replace most of what is currently there on the site with a new plant using a new process called pyrolysis, which burns material without oxygen, and meets tighter emissions requirements as well as turning waste into energy. Also present were officers from the county and district council planning and environment teams, and the Environment Agency. 

I  have posted before on the detail of the process, but suffice it to say that most of the questioning was along four lines:

- how the emissions would be controlled, and shut off if there was an emergency, who monitored and checked the output, and what chemicals might be produced - or remain - to be emitted from this process and how they would be dealt with or removed. It appears that the focus of the proposed operation would be burning wood, and as we know from the Flintcross Fire, last November, allowing people to run a business storing wood in huge piles, and then it catching fire and taking weeks to put it out, brings its own environmental problems!

- The second line of questioning was on the impact on the volumes of traffic along the A505, which is already operating at maximum capacity. People expressed concern that the highways team at the county council seemed to be saying the impact could be absorbed. 

- The third set of questions were about the impact of the proposed new chimney (replacing three existing ones, but much taller) on the flightpath into the Imperial War Museum airfield. We were told at the meeting that the IWM had formally objected to the proposals. 

- There was also questioning about monitoring of emissions - and smells - from the current incineration plant there, which is not currently checked by the Environment Agency as it is not a big enough operation. The presenters from Vetspeed and their consultant engineers basically said what there will be in the future if their application is successful will be a bigger operation but with tighter controls and newer technology for handling emissions. 

The planning application may not go to the county council before the end of the year. One of the actions I took away was to better understand the county highways team's analysis of the traffic impact, because it seems to me this needs a better solution given the size of the vehicles that will be transporting the waste to the site. I will be following this up and will be at the site visit proposed for the county planning committee when it is arranged.

A useful and informative meeting, with some good questions and a fair debate. 

Now - who won the Bake-off?!