Commercial bidder plans giant incinerator for Rookery South Pit

12.07.33pm GMT Mon 10th Nov 2008

Giant incinerator would bring waste from Buckinghamshire to Stewartby

Tory-run County and District Councils have been out-smarted by a commercial bidder who has put forward plans for a massive incinerator at Rookery South Pit, bringing the prospect of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste being imported into Bedfordshire from Buckinghamshire.

The full extent of the Tory dominated County Council's catalogue of errors over proposals for a giant incinerator at Rookery South pit is now becoming clearer. It claimed last October that it had negotiated a lock-out agreement with the landowners to prevent any other party from acquiring the site. Clearly it hadn't, leaving the way clear for waste disposal firms to come forward with proposals for Rookery South after the County declared that it was to be used for a giant incinerator. Unsurprisingly, that is exactly what has happened, yet the County Councillors and their partners in the Tory-run District Councils claim to be shocked by Covanta Energy's plans that were published last week. What is much worse for the people of Bedfordshire is that the scale of Covanta's proposals are carefully calculated to shift the decision-making power to central Government and away from any local council.

The people who can justifiably feel angry are local residents, who have been left exposed by the Tories' mismanagement of this whole process. They now face the prospect of thousands of tonnes of waste being imported from Buckinghamshire to be burnt on their doorstep in an incinerator three times the size of the county's own proposed plant.