Representation by Ruth Chaplain-Barton
- Date submitted
- 30 November 2022
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
The world has currently come together at COP27 to look at global solutions to tackle climate change. it seems quite unbelievable that MVV Environmental Ltd are forging ahead with plans to build a 50 megawatt plant in Wisbech. The planned incinerator will result in high levels of harmful greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 The Committee on Climate Change said: Achieving significant emission reductions in the waste sector requires a step-change towards a circular economy, moving away from landfill and incineration (and the associated methane and fossil CO2 emissions), and towards a reduction in waste arisings and collection of separated valuable resources for re-use and recycling. This applies at local, regional and national levels...Fossil emissions from energy from waste plants are growing rapidly (currently at 6.8 MtCO2e/yr), and will continue to do so in the near term... - Reducing UK emissions:2020 Progress Report to Parliament (Committee on Climate Change, 25 June 2020) Page 183 As well as the emissions from the incinerator being released into the air there will will be pollution from the estimated 300 lorries a day bringing waste to the town. Much of the A47 that these lorries will travel along is single carriageway. In the summer months the A47 is heavily congested with cars making their way to the North Norfolk coast. The section of the A47 between the Begdale roundabout and B&Q roundabout Wisbech is regularly heavily congested with cars nose to bumper crawling along impacting on journey time for locals going about their daily business. This would be the route the lorries would take meaning air quality would be greatly compromised and congestion significantly worsened. Within 750m of the proposed site is Thomas Clarkson academy, the largest secondary school in the area. Within 2km there are 6 schools, the College of West Anglia Wisbech Campus, the North Cambs Hospital numerous areas of housing and much of the town centre. This surely makes the proposed site completely unsuitable. The scale of the planned incinerator will have a detrimental visual effect on the town of Wisbech which has a high concentration of listed buildings (231) With an enormous scale to the incinerator and a 95m chimney towering over the town it will be totally out of keeping and not in scale to anything in the local area. The landscape of the fens is very flat, there is nothing and will be nothing that could soften or detract from the enormous scale of the proposed incinerator dominating the town, the skyline and the area, this will be seen from miles away. I urge you to look very carefully at this scheme and the hugely negative impact it will have on the community of Wisbech and the surrounding area, but more importantly to the future damage this scheme will have on the environment.