WHAT LRV’S PLANS MEAN FOR YOU
You and your family
· LRV’s site is only a few minutes from Mearns Cross and close to the neighbouring residential communities in East Renfrewshire and south Glasgow
· The site is 1.5 miles upwind from Mearns Primary School – the largest in the country
· Prevailing winds mean that any airborne toxins and residues emerging from the 200 foot tall chimneys atop 100 foot buildings will be deposited on Newton Mearns and the Southside – there may be unacceptable long-term public health implications as a result, especially for young children
· Incinerators are known to release highly dangers substances, such as dioxins, furans and other toxins, which are known to cause cancer
Traffic Impact
· Accepting LRV’s claim that they will process 1.5 million tonnes of waste each year, this would be equivalent to 350 – 400 one-way journeys using 30 tonne refuse vehicles – the maximum weight allowed on UK roads (This does not include return journeys or vehicles uplifting processed waste products )
· Lorries will journey into East Renfrewshire every 3 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year – we have no idea how much traffic there will be in addition to that – staff, visitors, service vehicles – all converging on local roads and eventually squeezing onto a former trunk road redeveloped exclusively for local access and recreation use with a very expensive cycle lane
· LRV claims that these vehicle journeys have no additional impact as the “vehicles are already on the road network” - a scanty figleaf for the fact that vehicles carrying potentially hazardous loads making their way to other facilities across the country will now all be concentrated in East Renfrewshire
· The additional traffic will concentrate attendant problems of carbon emissions and diesel particulates from exhaust fumes, noise pollution, traffic congestion and disruption, danger to pedestrians and other road users and wear and tear on the road network – Peterborough Council imposed a £2000 levy per vehicle trip to the as yet unbuilt incinerator there (which LRV cite as the inspiration for their project) in order to cover the costs of road wear and tear
Environment
· Another significant portion of our green belt will be lost forever – even if the incinerator closes in the near future, the farm land will remain lost to us and quite possibly will be contaminated
· The site chosen by LRV is farmland and the habitat of protected species such as badgers, water-voles, otters, newts and bats
· Part of the LRV development includes proposals to site massive water and effluent tanks – we have to presume these relate to toxic residues ‘scrubbed’ from the incinerator chimneys – this waste will be stored adjacent to water courses that run all the way down to the River Clyde
· Apart from the incinerator plant itself, further disruptive construction work would be necessary to put in road access capacity (given the number of vehicles going to the site this may have to include a lorry park) as well national grid infrastructure to enable electricity generated onsite to be transmitted into the system
· LRV currently claim that their incinerator will not take domestic waste. If true, it cannot contribute to reducing a large proportion of material that goes to landfill – this completely undermines LRV’s arguments as to how it can benefit the nation
· The incinerator is to burn industrial and commercial waste – which tends to generate a greater level of harmful by-products – and is a lucrative market for LRV – especially if they can undercut other providers and processes
· The incinerator also depends on burning organic waste that might otherwise have been recycled
· The incinerator does not contribute any renewable energy whatsoever as it simply burns waste rather than preventing its generation in the first place
The Future
· If built, there are indications that LRV may want to – or may have to – expand the scale of the operations in order to maintain the viability of the incinerator
· MD Neil Gallacher has dropped strong hints that LRV intend to pursue municipal, domestic waste contracts with local authorities in an article published online in ‘Pollution Solutions’, an online e-zine (http://www.pollutionsolutions-online.com/news/waste-management/21/lifetime_recycling_village/councils_ignore_landfill_alternatives_at_their_peril/14977/)
· Mr Gallachers’s bizarre proposition is that Councils can find a viable, more environmentally friendly alternative to landfill by burning domestic rubbish in incinerators – just like the one LRV want to build in East Renfrewshire!
Property Values
· Property values will undoubtedly suffer – an area lying in the shadow of a massive industrial facility is likely to be less than appealing to buyers. Families who have saved and worked hard to move into this area may see their efforts rewarded with negative equity
· Experience in the US suggest the planning blight from this type of development can lead to falls in value of at least 40% for the closest properties and 20% for those further away
The Community
· The community benefits on offer by LRV are derisory and effectively non-existent. They consist of a visitor centre and a promised £250,000 a year that would not even cover the annual bill for additional wear and tear on local roads – Peterborough Council have imposed a levy of £2000 per vehicle trip on the incinerator to be built there and it is less than half the size of the LRV facility
· If LRV are successful in gaining further contracts, this will certainly lead to additional heavy road traffic, more danger from pollution and possibly further expansion of the site
· Local job creation prospects are limited – specialist expertise to build and equip the plant will have to come from elsewhere and the numbers of staff actually required to keep the site operational are likely to be low
· The job numbers quoted by LRV are questionable to say the least – even they can’t seem to stick to the same story – at different times they have claimed 1,000 jobs, 700 and 329. It is worth noting that a comparable incineration operation in Florida, USA employs only 50 people.
The Nation
· At national level, LRV’s facility might actually set recycling targets back by causing more material that could be recycled to be burned to make the incinerator viable. Examples of this are already evident in Dumfries and Galloway
· Absolutely nothing would be achieved in minimising generation of waste in the first place, or in reducing energy and natural resources used in its creation – it does nothing to help Scotland achieve its Zero Waste targets
· LRV have not explained how they 56 MegaWatts of electricity they say burning rubbish will generate will be taken to the National Grid. LRV say they will “power 100,000 homes” – in fact they could only provide 560 watts to each house. That level of energy doesn’t even come close to offsetting the fuel and energy used in generating the waste they will burn in the first place and in transporting the waste in heavy lorries to LRV’s incinerator
So, who actually benefits?
LRV obviously makes money one way or another - Commercial interests get a quick short-term fix for their waste management problems. That’s it. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by adjacent communities or by residents in neighbouring areas.
In short, LRV is simply making use of a ‘green flag of convenience’ as a moral argument to try and get around planning regulations and the objections of residents.
