CAMPAIGNERS against plans to locate a £200 million waste incinerator at Westbury are urging Wiltshire Council to reject the company's application to switch the technology from advanced thermal treatment to moving grate combustion.

Marie Hillcoat, Nadia Evans and Dan Gmaj, of the Westbury Gasification Action Group/No Westbury Incinerator, are among the thousands of people who oppose the plans to build the incinerator in Westbury.

They said: "Two of the councillors who will decide the scheme live in Westbury, one in Upton Scudamore and the others across the county.

"Sixteen town and parish councils in their wards voted against the incinerator application. It is time the councillors do the same when they vote at the strategic planning committee. They must vote as a representative of the thousands who have objected.

"They can use Wiltshire Council planning policies, national planning policy and legislation. These include core policies 42, 54 and 55. Councillors can quote Waste Regulations 2011 and Town & Country ( EIA) Regulations 2011."

"Councillors are in their job to know about this kind of thing. You have got to tell them to act."

They added: "They can question the evidence and methods used by NREL/Hills to put their case.

"For the last five years every incinerator planning application made by Northacre Renewable Energy Limited has used weather data from Lyneham, over 20 miles away. Why have Wiltshire Council accepted this?

"The steep escarpment around Westbury where the White Horse lies affects weather conditions. New residents to the town will not know that there was a huge cement works that spewed out emissions over the town for 40 years. The chimney was 122 metres high – emissions still fell over the town.

"Because of the unique location of Westbury below the escarpment, temperature inversions occur and plumes do not disperse. The emissions did not drift away happily in the wind.

"Legislation may be in place but it doesn’t cover the worst most damaging bits - the very small particulates. They will pump out into the atmosphere. Wiltshire Council knows this.

"The present Wiltshire Council Director of Public Health was a member of the department when Maggie Rae, Director of Public Health, was concerned about the health of Westbury residents and was liaising with local GPs over the emissions from the cement works more than 20 years ago.

"Wiltshire Council have declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency. The incinerator alone would produce more CO2 than all the solar farms in the county.

"The pay-off for local people will be asking them to change their way of life to accommodate so great an amount of CO2 coming from one incinerator."

Shlomo Dowen, from UK Without Incineration, said; "If a locality is cursed with an incinerator, then that locality has to do without something else in order to pay for the carbon burden.

"Will local people be restricted in terms of how often they are able to use their cars or how often they can go on holiday?

"The question becomes what are local people prepared to do without to accommodate the emissions from an incinerator?"

WGAG/NWI added: "In October 2019 there was a huge explosion at a waste disposal plant near an airport in Austria – at least five people were injured.

"In 2017 a waste container carrying untreated incinerator bottom ash on a shipping vessel in Plymouth exploded.

"Thirty per cent of the waste burnt in the proposed incinerator will remain as bottom ash. The other kind of ash produced would be fly ash, which is highly toxic.

"Over 9,000 tonnes of hazardous fly ash (what is scraped out of the filters and chimney) will have to be transported off site.

Because over 80% of the waste that would feed the incinerator is commercial and industrial waste – mixed residual waste.

"The incinerator is a merchant venture, a private business. The council has a 25-year contract with Hills to supply household waste – less than 20 per cent of what would be burnt.

"Write to your county councillor and your MP again."