The Parish Council met on the 9th February 2004 to debate an application for the disposal of hazardous waste and co-disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste at Warboys Landfill Site. It was decided to recommend to Cambridgeshire County Council that the application be rejected. The following letter was despatched to the County Council:

Mr M Vigor,

Head of Strategic Planning,

Cambridgeshire County Council,

Box ET 1011,

Shire Hall,

Cambridge. H/05035/03/CW

CB3 0AP. 12th February 2004

Dear Mr Vigor,

DISPOSAL OF HAZARDOUS WASTE BY LANDFILL IN CELL 6 AND REGULARISATION OF CURRENT AND HISTORIC CO-DISPOSAL OF HAZARDOUS AND NON-HAZARDOUS WASTE, AMENDED FINAL RESTORATION DETAILS, AND RELATED ENGINEERING AND ANCILLARY OPERATIONS, WARBOYS LANDFILL SITE, STATION ROAD, WARBOYS

I refer to your letter of 14th November 2003, inviting comments on the above planning application. The Parish Council are grateful to you for extending the deadline for the submission of comments, for organising the public exhibitions in the village in December and January and for supplying copies of the letters sent to you by statutory consultees and the public about this application.

You will be aware from previous correspondence and from the attendance of yourself and your staff at both the public exhibitions and a public meeting in the village last July that there is huge concern about this application, not only in the village of Warboys but in surrounding parishes. Any permission granted by yourselves could have potentially disastrous consequences for local residents, not just in the short term, but for future generations.

The implications of the disposal of hazardous waste by landfill upon public health is a subject that has only come to prominence in recent years but sufficient doubt is cast by the studies to date to suggest that such sites can cause damage to the health of residents living within up to 3 kilometres from a landfill site. As you will appreciate there are 252 properties within 1 kilometre and 1677 within 1 and 2 kilometres radii from the site. It may be some time before further studies confirm the fears identified in the studies to date. That will be too late for the residents of Warboys who will have been exposed to contaminants harmful to health for several years. Moreover once permission has been granted and the site filled, it will be impossible to rectify the situation. Needless to say this site has already been accepting hazardous waste for the past 5 years. Hindsight will be of no benefit to residents whose health has suffered because of the grant of the current application.

I trust that the County Council are aware of the disappointment and concern that is felt locally that this site has been allowed to accept the co-disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste for over five years without the benefit of planning permission and consequently without a valid waste management licence. This is not an insignificant operation of which statutory agencies and the public were ignorant. During that time hundreds of thousands of tons of waste have been deposited at the site, much of it originating from elsewhere in the country. This has resulted in a situation where, in the Environment Agency’s own admission, gas releases are the highest in the country and the carcinogenic compounds contained in those releases far exceed acceptable levels.

You will know that when application was first made for landfill at this site, residents of Warboys were given an assurance by the applicants, Shanks and McEwan, that inert material only would be deposited and indeed this is the basis of the Environmental Impact Assessment which accompanied the planning application. Landfill operations were also to be concluded within 5 years. The site has now been in operation for approaching 8 years with permission for a further 4 and has been filled with hundreds of thousand of tons of material that is not classed as ‘inert’. You will appreciate that the village of Warboys feels that it has been utterly and completely failed by the statutory agencies charged with responsibility for regulating such sites.

Turning to the current application itself, the Parish Council has engaged a consultant, A Watson, BSc., C. Eng., to offer advice. A copy of his report is attached. As you will observe from that document, he has raised serious concern about the omissions from the application and the failure of the applicant to address certain aspects of the Development Plan and the Landfill Directives.

From the public consultation exercise, you will also be aware of the huge concern locally over the potential impact of this application. To summarise –

  • 1,824 residents or 90.3% of respondents replied ‘yes’ in a Parish Plan exercise undertaken in Warboys in 2003 to the question ‘If you had been consulted, would you have objected to the licensing of the site for hazardous waste disposal?’
  • Approximately 450 people who attended a public meeting in Warboys in July 2003, chaired by Sir Brian Mawhinney MP were overwhelmingly opposed to the disposal of hazardous waste at the site.
  • Some 300 people attended two exhibitions organised by the County Council in December and January.
  • There have been over 270 individual letters of objection submitted to the County Council opposing the application.
  • A petition signed by 1,544 people has been presented to the County Council opposing the application.

A number of the statutory consultees have recommended that the application be refused, most notably the Middle Level Commissioners. Consultants engaged by Huntingdonshire District Council have raised concerns that there is insufficient information within the Environmental Statement for the Council to be assured that the development of cell 6 for hazardous waste disposal will not cause harm to the environment and/or public health. The Director of Public Health in Huntingdonshire requested further information from the applicants as long ago as August 2003 to enable her to comment on the PPC application which, as far as the Parish Council is aware, has yet to be supplied.

For the reasons outlined, Warboys Parish Council urges the County Council the strongest terms possible to refuse this application. The reasons are listed below:-

  • (a) the application fails to meet the requirements of the ‘Relevant Objectives’ of the Waste Management Licensing Regulations and Waste Framework Directive;
  • (b) the application is contrary to the Development Plan and national policy on the grounds of lack of sustainability and the failure of the applicant to demonstrate Best Practice Environmental Option and to comply with the requirements of the proximity principle, waste hierarchy and regional self-sufficiency (as substantiated in more detail in the consultant’s report attached);
  • (c) the disposal of hazardous waste alone is likely to further increase the already extended operational life of the site;

(d) the safety of the proposed operations have not been demonstrated in the application;

  • (e) the previous operational problems with the site and subsequent impact on amenity has generated a high level of public concern about the potential health impact of the proposal, including the already well documented complaints of odours emanating from the site;
  • (f) the failure of the applicant to assess the timescale to fully stabilise the site is contrary to the sustainability criteria of the Environment Agency Regulatory Guidance Note 3 and Government policy for stabilisation within one generation, i.e. 30-50 years;
  • (g) the application fails to demonstrate a local need for the disposal of hazardous waste at the site and relies upon the importation of waste by long distance haulage which is contrary to the Waste Local Plan, PPG10 ‘Planning and Waste Management’ and Waste Strategy 2000 and therefore does not represent the Best Practicable Environmental Option;
  • (h) recent studies on the impact upon health of living within close proximity of landfill sites gives legitimacy to the fears of residents about the risks that they face in both the short and long terms if the application were to be granted;
  • (i) the acknowledgement in the application that fugitive emissions of landfill gas may be as high as 60% is wholly unacceptable. Moreover the use in the Environmental Statement of modelling based upon the 95th percentile is inadequate when the Environment Agency draft technical guidance note on odour suggests the use of the 98th percentile. Even so it is likely that the 95th percentile of 1 hour average concentrations could be of the order of 4 ou m-3 to 73 ou m-3 at Warboys Wood edge whereas a typical annoyance value for odour is considered to be 5 ou m-3 and above. It is significant that there is no reference to odour over which there have many complaints in the past in the non-technical summary submitted by the applicant;
  • (j) case law has confirmed that public concern is a material planning consideration which must be given significant weight in the planning process. Such public concern is substantiated by past operations at the site, the results of recent health studies and the comments of statutory consultees and consultants, and is of a sufficient magnitude that the application should be refused;
  • (k) the proximity of the site to residential properties and grade 1 agricultural land renders it unsuitable for the use proposed in view of the dangers to health posed both from the release of fugitive gas emissions and odours and the risk of leachate contaminating adjoining farmland and entering the food chain;
  • (l) the local road network is unsuitable for the transportation of hazardous waste as demonstrated by the fact that, since it opened, there have been 4 known accidents of laden heavy goods vehicles en route to the site overturning between St Ives and the site itself. The haulage of hazardous materials poses greater risk of contamination in the event of future accidents.

The Parish Council request the opportunity to address the meeting of the County Council’s Development Control Committee when this application is to be considered to speak in support of its recommendation for refusal. The Council also urge that, if this application is refused, a stop notice be issued to prevent the further co-disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste without planning permission at the site with immediate effect.

Finally, the Parish Council trusts that the County Council will not be influenced in their decision by the fact that the site has accepted co-disposal for the past 5 years without a valid planning permission and waste management licence. There is sufficient evidence to demonstrate the adverse impact upon the local community and the environment which has arisen from co-disposal during that time. The grant of retrospective planning permission will not rectify the omissions of the County Council and the Environment Agency. Two wrongs do not make a right.

If you need any further information in support of the Parish Council’s objection, no doubt you will let me know.

Yours sincerely,

R. Reeves,

Clerk.

 

Parish Council's Position