Christopher
Booker's notebook
(Filed:
Waste
is the burning question
It might be called "the tale of two incinerators": two stories which
between them illustrate the surreal shambles we are being drawn into by the EU's
diktats on how we dispose of our waste. The first incinerator, arousing a storm
of opposition, is a giant plant planned for Newhaven, to burn 210,000 tons of
rubbish a year from
The objectors - 8,000 wrote to
Although the plant's purpose, in obedience to EU policy, is to reduce landfill,
it will still generate more than 180 tons of toxic ash a day. This must be
transported to the nearest suitable landfill site, more than 100 miles away in
Gloucestershire, where local residents say they do not want it.
The opposition has been so vociferous that Newhaven's incinerator seems to have
stalled in the planning process. And similar hostility is provoked wherever such
plants are proposed. So many councils have already turned them down that the
Government now has no hope of meeting its original target, requiring the
building of 165 such incinerators by 2016.
Contrast this with the story of the small-scale incinerator designed by Ross
Donovan, an ingenious Bedfordshire engineer. It was devised as a boon to
factories and industrial estates, using their endless supplies of waste
cardboard packaging - which is currently carted off to landfill - to fuel a
cheap and efficient heating system.
I
reported in 2004 the sorry saga of how, when Mr Donovan and his backers had
already invested £300,000 in developing his system, encouraged by the
Environment Agency, the agency changed its mind. It decided that, since the fuel
was "waste", Mr Donovan's furnaces must comply with the EU's waste
incineration directive. Fitted with all the
"scrubbing" and monitoring equipment required for industrial
incinerators,
his design would no longer be economically viable.
This ruling was supported by Elliott Morley, the environment minister. He
conceded that if the incinerators burnt exactly the same cardboard, direct from
its manufacturers, this was "fuel" and would be fine. But if the
cardboard had been used for another purpose, it was legally "waste",
and was subject to the draconian requirements of EU law.
This U-turn was so devastating that, last summer, with the help of his MP,
Alistair Burt, Mr Donovan complained to the Ombudsman, claiming compensation for
having being misled. He wants to invest the money in a new heating system, using
"biofuel" from oilseed rape. By 2010 the EU insists that biofuel must
supply 5.75 per cent of our oil needs. At present we produce less than a tenth
of that.
Eight months later the Environment Agency has proved so successful in stalling
the Ombudsman's questions that Mr Donovan's case is no further forward.
As at
Where
did all the defence correspondents go?
On Friday thousands of would-be shareholders rushed to invest in Qinetiq, the
now-privatised defence research arm of the Ministry of Defence. We might
question whether they were altogether wise, in light of the MoD's new policy to
buy defence equipment, whenever possible, designed and built in other countries
of the EU, rather than in
The latest in the ever-lengthening list of projects dictated by this "EU
first" policy is Seafox, the Royal Navy's new £35 million ship-borne mine
disposal system, built by a German firm, Atlas Elektronik. This was chosen in
preference to the Archerfish system, privately developed by BAE Systems in
partnership with a
Yet again, as in its contracts with French, German, Italian and Swedish firms
for the PAAMs and Storm Shadow missiles, the Army's MAN trucks, Panther
reconnaissance vehicles and its £14-billion Future Rapid Effect System, the MoD
now seems hell bent on buying "European" at any cost.
In
view of the huge political, military and financial implications of this dramatic
shift in policy, costing