This week Welsh MEP Jill Evans said it was a "disgrace" that the Hafod Environmental Group campaigners had to take their case to Europe to get the landfill site in their community closed down because no one else will stand up for their interests.
Jill Evans was speaking in Brussels after handing in a petition to the Chair of the European Parliament Petitions Committee on behalf of the Hafod Group. The Group has been campaigning to get the landfill site in Wrecsam, Wales closed for waste that is being transported from Liverpool in England.
Previously, the Celtic League emailed all the Councillors on Wrecsam Council in an effort to get them to overturn the decision to use the quarry as a landfill at the beginning of September 2006 and also wrote to the waste management company in Merseyside, responsible for the transport of the waste, urging them to reconsider their plans.
Ms Evans went on to say, "Putting a petition to the European Parliament can be a way of getting action taken when others have let you down. In this case both the local authority and the Welsh Assembly government have badly let down the people who are having to live with this landfill site."
Meanwhile in Cornwall , another waste management company, Viridor Waste Management, has signed a seven year contract with Plymouth City Council to dump rubbish at Lean Quarry near Liskeard, Cornwall. The dumping of Plymouth 's waste in Cornwall makes a mockery of Cornwall Council's decision last year to build a waste incinerator in Restormel on the grounds that waste should be "diverted away from landfill."
In addition, it now appears that the company who won the contract to build and run the incinerator may still need to use landfill sites, if anything happens to the incinerator, and Cornwall Council would have to foot the bill.
St. Dennis Incinerator Group, the campaign group set up to oppose the building of the incinerator state on their website that:
"Cornwall County Council keep on telling us what a great deal they've got us with this incinerator contract. Instead, the more we hear about it the more lies we keep finding out and the more that it seems that SITA have got the contract sewn up completely in their interests. If we allow this to go ahead it will be us, the taxpayers of Cornwall that will have to pay through the nose for SITA's profits."
Mebyon Kernow leader Dick Cole, who is a District Councillor where Cornwall's waste incinerator will be based commented, "We do not believe that Cornwall County Council's approach to waste represents the best environmental solution."
It may be that Cornwall Council may still need to use Lean Quarry themselves in the future.
(Report compiled by Rhisiart Tal-e-bot)
J B Moffatt Director of Information Celtic League
25/11/06