Waste treatment sites revealed (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

Waste treatment sites revealed

4:35pm Wednesday 7th November 2007

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SITES across St Albans and Welwyn Hatfield for waste treatment plants to tackle Hertfordshire's growing mountain of rubbish have been revealed.

A draft list of 54 Hertfordshire sites has been drawn up by the county council for consultation, including seven in Welwyn Hatfield and five in St Albans.

They include Green Belt land at Roehyde, just south of Junction 4 of the A1(M), and the Burrowfields industrial area in Welwyn Garden City, only a short distance from a housing estate.

Other potentially controversial sites include Tyttenhanger Quarry - a key local birdwatching area - and a telecommunications site off Smug Oak Lane near Bricket Wood.

Most of Hertfordshire's three million annual tonnes of waste, of which more than 80 per cent is industrial, is currently exported outside the county, but the Government is insisting this cannot continue.

Councillor Derrick Ashley, cabinet member for planning, said: "For years Hertfordshire has been chucking waste over our neighbours' fences."

So the county council is drawing up a list of possible sites, although any proposal to install a waste treatment plant would need specific planning permission.

Not all the sites will actually be used, but the council is unable to speculate on how many will be needed.

The plants could be traditional incinerators, composters, heat treatment sites, recycling units or other technologies yet to be invented.

They would be commercial operations dealing mainly with industrial concerns, particularly building firms, although the county council, which has to find a home for half a million tonnes of domestic waste annually, could also become a customer.

The authority hopes the public will comment on the sites and is opening an eight-week formal consultation in January. The list of sites, possibly amended, will then be ratified by the Government before a public inquiry, probably in 2009.

Nearly half the 54 Hertfordshire sites already host some form of waste management and most others are in industrial areas.

The St Albans locations include a recycling plant off Harper Lane and waste sites at Redbournbury and Harper Lodge Farm.

The Welwyn Hatfield locations include the former Hatfield aerodrome, a sewage works near Mill Green, a quarry off Coopers Green Lane, the borough council depot in Tewin Road, Welwyn Garden City, and the Travellers Lane industrial area, Welham Green.

Councillor Ashley said that while the authority welcomed comments, objections would not effective without details of why a particular site was unsuitable.

When the formal consultation opens in January residents will be able to comment on the county council website, but until then submissions can be made in writing, addressed to the assistant director of strategic planning, County Hall, Hertford.

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