Natural Resources Wales (NRW) yesterday (28 October) granted an environmental permit for a controversial £800-million incineration facility in Deeside, Flintshire.

US incineration specialist Wheelabrator Technologies Inc (Wheelabrator), which was chosen as the preferred bidder for the project in April 2014, plans to build the Parc Adfer (Recover Park) incinerator as part of its 25-year contract to treat residual waste on behalf of the North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project (NWRWTP).

Situated on the former steelworks at the Deeside Industrial Park, near Connah’s Quay, the NWRWTP is a joint procurement between Flintshire, Conwy, Denbighshire, Gwynedd and Isle of Anglesey councils.

The proposed facility will process around 150,000 tonnes per year ‘non-recyclable household waste’ from the five council areas in an attempt to reach the Welsh Government’s recycling target of 70 per cent of all waste by 2025.

The incinerated waste will provide around 14.4 megawatts of electricity, enough to power ‘around 30,000’ homes, according to Wheelabrator, which also indicates that heat or steam produced in the process ‘could be piped to nearby users’. Delivery of heat from incinerators in the UK is often difficult to achieve, though, as the relevant infrastructure needed to carry heat from one site to another requires an extensive network of pipes, which is both disruptive and costly to place.

Ash produced through the process will be treated on site to produce materials for the construction industry.

It is estimated that the project will create around 300 jobs during the construction phase, with about 35 full-time jobs once the facility is operational.

Concerns over project’s impact on health and the environment

Plans for the incinerator were rejected by Flintshire County Council planning committee in April 2015 due to concerns over excessive pollution, noise and traffic caused by the site. These rulings were then overturned by just one vote in Flintshire County Council a month later.

NRW has since announced that the new waste facility will comply with environmental laws and can operate without harming the environment.

This came as part of a consultation process, in which NRW consulted with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and Public Health Wales on the plans to investigate whether the facility could impact on people’s health.

Speaking yesterday of the decision to grant the permit, Sian Williams, Head of Operations for North Wales, NRW, said: “We studied the application in great detail and are satisfied that the facility can operate without harming the environment or the health of people nearby. We are therefore issuing a permit to allow it to operate and will monitor its operation to ensure that it complies with its permit conditions.”

Waste treatment overcapacity

Despite the belief that the incinerator will not harm health or the environment, the growing number of incinerators in the UK has come under scrutiny recently, with the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) withdrawing funding from several recovery projects in England over the last two years, after finding that the 29 residual waste treatment projects that already have funding are ‘sufficient’ to meet the EU’s 2020 landfill diversion targets.

Further to this, waste consultancy Eunomia Research & Consulting has warned that due to the amount of energy recovery facilities being built, the UK’s residual waste treatment capacity could exceed supply by 2019 and could limit the UK’s recycling rate to 66 per cent.

Learn more about Wheelabrator and the North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project