John CRAWFORD He’s old school and we’re proud of it
The onlookers were cows and the town planners wore shirts like PJs
CIWM’s excellent ‘Great Waste & Resources Survey’ is published every April, and a recurring theme is the question: “Are there enough waste treatment facilities being built in the UK?” The usual reply for the last fi ve years on the trot has been "No, but we’re getting there."
Ever since I started training over 49 years ago, there was always some sort of survey or report published every other year about “There only being around seven years licensed landfi ll capacity left in the UK, and we’ll face major problems if we don’t do something about it.”
The usual solutions which were suggested, invariably meant some sort of intervention from either the Councils or central Government. In due course CoPA ’74 required all Councils to ensure they’d made suffi cient provision for the proper disposal of their waste arisings. But this part of the Act was never implemented. I always wondered why?
As each seven-year cycle has come and gone, it’s clear that these forecasts weren’t all that accurate.
While Brexit will allow the UK more fl exibility in setting realistic waste recycling and diversion targets that refl ect our own circumstances, it would help if we had a more strategic approach when planning new waste treatment plants rather than simply hoping that new sites will emerge as a consequence of individual Councils working in isolation.
So where do we go from here? When the implications of Maastricht were fully understood, SEPA drafted a strategic
network of potential sites for treatment plants in Scotland, but were a bit wary of making it widely known in case local politicians got wind of it.
Who wants a nasty waste treatment plant near their home (despite the fact that it would process waste we’d all stored up for a fortnight and happily lived with it beside our homes with no adverse eff ects)?
But on the continent, waste treatment plants don’t have the same reputation that’s commonplace in the UK. Oddly enough, until the mid-60s many towns and cities had their own incinerators.
Haircuts suggested they lived in houses badly needing re-wiring
There wasn’t the opposition to them that’s experienced today, despite the fact the technology has advanced beyond all comprehension since then.
I’m the fi rst to admit that for many years I had a mediocre opinion of town planners.
I recall the one who demanded we screen our new transfer station with mature trees, despite the fact the only onlookers would be cows in the adjacent fi elds. Some of the planners I’ve dealt with wore shirts that looked like a pyjama jacket, and had haircuts that suggested they lived in houses that were badly needing re-wiring.
I did however change my view when I was involved in the Highland Waste Strategy
Group over two decades ago.
Rather than us waste managers trying to ‘fi nd’ sites that the planners could support, they suggested we give them a brief based on the criteria needed for the Highlands’ waste disposal requirements, and let them get on with it.
To their credit, they rose to the task and came up with an excellent site that was well away from the fl ightpath for Inverness Airport, had good road links, and met all our geological and hydrological specifi cations.
The only problem was the site was in the constituency of the Depute Leader of Highland Regional Council - about to become the Leader of Highland Council.
He didn’t want aggro from constituents about a new waste disposal site being built in his backyard!
So it was back to the drawing board and by 1996, I’d left the area to return to the west of Scotland.
JOHN trained at Saltcoats Burgh in the late 60s. After a decade he moved to PD Beatwaste Ltd/ Wimpey Waste Management Ltd. He then joined the Civil Engineering Dept at Strathclyde University before posts at Renfrew, Hamilton, Inverness and East Ayrshire Councils.
A Fellow of CIWM, he served on its Scottish Centre Council from 1988- 2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland and was their President between 1991-92
66
SHM June, 2017
www.skiphiremagazine.co.uk
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