Artist's impression of the UBB Essex MBT
A ‘steel signing’ ceremony took place last week (26 July) to officially mark the start of construction for the new waste treatment facility being developed by Urbaser Balfour Beatty in Essex.
One of the steel beams that will be used to build the mechanical biological treatment (MBT) facility on Courtauld Road, Basildon, was signed by local members and officers involved in the project, including: Councillor Kay Twitchen, Chairman of Essex County Council, and Councillor Roger Walters, Cabinet Member for Waste & Recycling.
According to the Essex Waste Partnership (of Essex County Council and Southend-on-Sea Borough Council), the site is being developed in order to ‘transform waste disposal in Essex and Southend’, and ‘dramatically reduce reliance on landfill’. Currently, 51.8 per cent of household waste in Essex is composted or recycled, with councils in the Essex Waste Partnership having agreed to increase this figure to 60 per cent by 2020.
The facility will be capable of treating up to 417,000 tonnes of waste each year and has been financed by part of the £100 million Private Finance Initiative (PFI) fund awarded to the waste partnership by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2009.
Construction of the plant is expected to take 16 months to complete.
Procurement
The process to appoint a contractor to build and operate the waste treatment facility began in November 2009.
Following an evaluation process, on 3 January last year the Essex Waste Partnership announced the Urbaser and Balfour Beatty consortium as preferred bidder for the treatment of residual waste in Essex, and signed a 25-year contract with them on 31 May the same year. In February of this year, the site was granted planning permission by Essex County Council.
Technology
The new facility will treat kerbside collected residual waste, trade waste collected by the local Essex authorities, street sweepings, and all non-recycled waste from recycling centres for household waste across Essex and Southend.
Once delivered to the site, the waste will be transferred to a sealed bunker designed to minimise noise pollution and problems with vermin. Following this, it will be mechanically processed to sort and separate any recyclates, which are then sent for reprocessing elsewhere.
The remaining waste is composted over a seven-week period to remove moisture and biodegrade. The degraded material is then refined to ‘extract minerals’ for use as construction aggregate.
Whatever remains of the original feedstock is then used to create either stabilised output material for use in landfill, or solid recovered fuel that can be incinerated for energy recovery.
Leachate produced as part of the treatment process is collected below the facility and transferred to an on-site waste water treatment facility, to reduce the risk of water pollution. Similarly, air expelled at the site is ‘scrubbed’ and filtered before being returned to the atmosphere in an attempt to mitigate potential odour issues.
Facility ‘affordable and environmentally acceptable’
According to the Essex Waste partnership, the construction of the facility will create up to 250 employment opportunities and, once completed, will create 87 full time jobs as well as apprenticeship positions. There are currently 112 full-time workers and four local apprentices, placed by the Essex Apprentice programme, currently working on site.
Commenting on the site, Walters said: “This is an important day for the Essex Waste Partnership, as we mark the start of construction for the waste treatment facility at Courtauld Road.
“This facility will enable Essex and Southend to achieve a sustainable waste management solution, which is affordable and environmentally acceptable. I look forward to seeing the development on site over the coming months.”
Local Concern
Last year, local residents raised concerns with UBB over potential traffic problems as a result of the construction and operation of the facility.
According to UBB, the construction phase of the project would see 96 vehicles arrive on site ‘in a 12 hour period’, 50 of which would be HGVs. Once operational traffic figures are expected to rise to 302 ‘in a 12 hour period’, 206 of which would be HGVs.
However, UBB argues that the facility ‘will be treating waste that is already transported by road around the county’ and that the preferred route is composed mainly of wider roads.
Read more about the MBT proposals.
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