Feature
A Burning Issue

Residents in Slough are fighting to remove the planning permissions for a monster incinerator on their doorstep. Severe health concerns, and the revelation of shady deals between the waste management company and local politicians, have led to public outcry and are fueling a powerful public campaign. By Stuart Melvin

The South East has a problem. An area that is home to 5 million people, stretching as far east as Westminster and incorporating Camberley, Watford, High Wycombe and Woking, is about to be exposed to an incredible risk. Thousands of people could contract deadly diseases for many years to come. So surely local councils or national Government will do something against it? Well, not exactly.

In June 2000, Slough Borough Council agreed to give planning consent to Grundon Waste Management Ltd. to build two new waste incinerators at a site in Colnbrook, on the border of Hillingdon. The first of these is to be a new clinical waste incinerator, replacing a smaller one already operating on the site and burning 1.25 tons of waste per hour. The other is a much larger municipal waste incinerator (or, as they are deceptively known, an 'Energy from Waste' plant). This incinerator is planned to be the second largest in Europe, processing 54 tonnes of waste an hour, 24 hours a day. Due to public consultation being kept to a bare minimum, the proposal got through almost silently and public awareness was practically non-existent. However, almost four years after planning consent was approved, local doctors' concerns were made public by a local paper, the Slough Express, and the issue has quickly become a major debate in the area. A campaign group made up of several local residents has, in just a few months, spread awareness and galvanised public opinion against the incinerators, holding public meetings to an attendance of more than 200 people and collecting over 6000 signatures to date.

Concerns over public health have been the main driving force behind the Slough Anti-Incinerator Network (SAIN) campaign. The fact is that incinerators do not dispose of waste - they simply change its form, breaking it down into much smaller constituents that are either released into the air as emissions via the chimney-stack, or land-filled as toxic ash from the filter equipment. Amongst the emissions are extremely small PM2.5 particulates (2.5 microns in diameter), which are not yet regulated in this country, as well as larger particles, heavy metals and dioxins. Add to this the fact that the smaller incinerator will burn low-level radioactive waste, leading to radioactive isotopes joining with the other particles and finding their way into the body, and it is easy to see why people should be so outraged.

There has also been considerable public outcry about the revelation that Slough Borough Council granted planning consent at roughly the same time as Grundon offered a substantial donation for a local project. Shortly before planning consent was granted, Grundon manager Richard Skehens sent a letter to the council reminding them of the company’s £100,000 donation to Sustrans, a sustainable transport charity, to provide cycle routes in the borough of Slough. The letter promised a further £10,000 donation if the council were “minded to grant planning permission”. Slough Borough Council claimed this was part of the so-called “106 agreement” which, according to Councillor George Davidson, meant that the donation to the community was required by planning law. However, the new head of the council Richard Stokes has called the offer a “municipal bribe”. However, the Slough Express reported that “a statement from Grundon appears to contradict this, saying the £10,000 was actually part of the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme, a tax rebate used to fund community projects”. Either way, residents consider the interaction to at least border on the corrupt.

Physician on a Mission
In January this year, 25 local doctors sent a letter to the Environment Agency outlining their many serious concerns over the proposal (as yet, the EA have not had the courtesy to reply). One of those GP’s was Dr. Jerry Thompson, who has since compiled several reports into the dangers of incinerators, and has been instrumental in the local campaign. Incinerators have been linked with severe rises in health problems including heart disease, asthma, foetal development and various cancers, particularly child leukaemia. “The ability of particulates to increase cardiovascular mortality is now well documented”, writes Dr Thompson, “Slough has the highest rate of coronary heart disease in the South East, it would be negligent to increase this risk by building an incinerator”.

According to Dr. Thompson, the rate of cancer is also expected to increase dramatically as “pollution from particulates is a known cause of lung cancer and a rise of particulate concentration is inevitable with an incinerator. The historical Six Cities Study in the United States showed that a 37% increase in lung cancer followed a rise of 18.6 micrograms per cubic metre in PM2.5 particulates”. Dr. Thompson explains that these effects will only become apparent over long periods of time, expecting to see increased cancer rates in children after 5 years and in adults after 13, with the largest increase becoming obvious after 20 years. He is among many people to have pointed out that the threat is even greater concerning children as they breathe more air relative to their size and are more susceptible to many of the dangerous emissions from incinerators.

Not even the next generation is safe. The borough of Hillingdon is a stone's throw away from the Grundon site, where a small clinical incinerator has operated since 1990. Hillingdon also has a smaller incinerator operating at their hospital, and since these became operational, West London (Hillingdon in particular) has seen the rate of birth defects skyrocket from some of the lowest in the UK to some of the highest. “Foetuses have virtually no protection against toxic chemicals as they have no fat stores. They store them in the only fatty tissue they have: the brain and nervous system,” writes Dr. Thompson. A study in Cumbria over a 37 year period showed that near incinerators, the incidence of neural tube defects (especially spina bifida, where the foetus' spinal column doesn't close completely) was 17% higher, and heart defects 12% higher. Also, studies have shown congenital defects of many kinds near an incinerator site at Sint Niklass, Belgium, and mouth and facial defects were found to have more than doubled near an incinerator at Zeeberg, Netherlands.

Grundon have stated that their clinical incinerator will burn radioactive waste, and whilst they would claim that the low-level nature of this waste would make it safe to burn, the truth is somewhat different. There is a significant difference between internal irradiation and external irradiation. External irradiation is usually a single burst diffused over the body surface, and polluters often claim that because the levels are lower than the natural background radiation, it must be safe. However, this is not the case with internal irradiation, where radioactive particles are taken into the body which mistakes them for natural substances. For example, the thyroid gland could begin storing radioactive iodine instead of normal iodine, and the chemical will continue to emit radiation over time. These radioactive emissions will effect nearby cells and can induce cancer as well as causing genetically-transferable diseases. Tragically, safety measures fail to take into account the difference between internal and external irradiation. As Dr. Thompson has pointed out “Cancer rates do not differ in areas with widely varying levels of natural background radiation...this, itself, should tell us that natural background radiation is irrelevant”.

Profit Guarantees
However, these are not the only reasons to fear the proliferation of this technology. Also being emitted from the chimney will be huge amounts of air pollutants and greenhouse gases, including nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide. The local council has admitted that the air surrounding the Grundon site will most likely exceed European air pollution regulations. In addition to this, incineration acts as a strong deterrent to any serious attempts at recycling, due to the need to feed the plant with a steady stream of waste 24 hours a day. To satisfy this need, and to secure financial backing for the project, Grundon are lobbying hard to lock various local authorities and contractors, including Surrey Waste and the West London Waste Authority (WLWA), into 15-20 year waste contracts. Surrey Waste, it should be noted, is wholly owned by SITA UK, a waste management operation that is in turn wholly owned by Suez Environment, the world's largest waste services corporation. Campaigners point out that if these contracts include compensation clauses for any lost earnings when the promised quota is not forthcoming, it would seriously undermine any future advances in waste reduction or recycling, pushing authorities to continue business as usual.

SAIN achieved a huge victory influencing the local elections in June, as the campaign was a major factor in overturning Labour’s historic majority in the town. The largest group in the council is now a coalition of local independent councillors, who have pledged to fight the construction of the incinerators. SAIN wants the planning consent to be revoked by any means available, and a motion was passed at the last full council (despite some Labour councillors' disruptive efforts) committing to engage the services of lawyers to begin this process.

However, there is one other important and necessary path to stopping this horrific project. Without an extremely large and long-term contract from the West London Waste Authority (WLWA), Grundon will find it very difficult to secure financial backing, and whilst they may look elsewhere, it would be a major fracture in their plans. To achieve this end, public meetings are being planned in the six boroughs of the WLWA (Hounslow, Hillingdon, Brent, Ealing, Richmond and Harrow), with the hope of new groups forming to fight the proposal in their areas. A group in Hounslow is already well on its way.

The next public meeting will be held at Uxbridge Civic Centre on August 19th. Anybody interested in the meeting or in helping to organise in their area should contact SAIN by telephone on 01628 662774 or by email at info@sainslough.co.uk. Alternatively, see the campaign website at www.sainslough.co.uk.