Veolia chosen as preferred bidder with New Barnfield as the site for an incinerator
April 28, 2011 3:29 PM
Louise Lotz attended a meeting at County Hall this morning. First the waste panel met to debate the incinerator proposal and then the press and public were excluded while they made a decision. Cabinet met next and after the meeting they issued a press release to say that New Barnfield had been chosen as the site with Veolia as the preferred bidder. Said Louise: 'This is a completely unsuitable site, and the natural beauty will be destroyed forever. We did try to persuade them to delay the decision and to use other methods of waste disposal, but to no avail.'
Liberal Democrat county councillor Malcolm Cowan has reacted with horror to the news that New Barnfiled in Hatfiled has been chosed as
the site for Hertfordshire's giant incinerator by the ruling Tory group.
'I have said all along this is a totally unsuitable site, and have led the fight against it at County Hall, and here at Welwyn Hatfield
council, where my motion against it was agreed unanimously. The site is next to a special needs school with many children suffering from
autism; they will be particularly badly affected by the noise of the lorries coming and going all day.
'Early on in the process, Herts county council did an analysis of many possible sites - New Barnfield wasn't even the most suitable one in
Hatfield, let alone across the county. On that basis alone, it should have been dismissed.
Malcolm continued 'In fact, neither of the sites put forward are suitable; as there is now to be a public enquiry, we can make the case again that the site is wrong, and there should be a re-evaluation as to whether the incinerator solution agreed some years back is still the most appropriate - life has moved on and the county council needs to as well. Liberal Democrat councils elsewhere have come up with other much cheaper alternatives.'
In the County Division of St Stephen Liberal Democrats have been relieved that their community is not being blighted with the Tory's giant incinerator. Local District Councillor for Park Street Ward, Nicola McAlister-Baillie, who led the Lib Dem petition and poster campaign against this development said: 'I want to thank all the residents who signed our petition, displayed posters and those who wrote in
personally. This showed the strength of feeling in our community against this outrageous proposal.'
Lib Dem County Councillor, Aislinn Lee, who has been speaking out strongly against the scheme at County Hall added: 'I am so relieved that the Tories at County Hall, who were proposing an Incinerator in our Community, have finally had to accept that this is not the right site. Local Tory councillors have been unsurprisingly and embarrassingly silent on the issue!'
ENDS
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