Simmering on the border between Neath and Swansea, near the docks is Crymlyn Burrows, an area that already hosts a fairly remarkable cocktail of past and current industrial pollution.

Its neighbours include Tir John Landfill, the major household waste landfill serving Swansea City Council; Gower Chemicals; Fords; Cuba Buildings and Kings Dock which contain hazardous waste; Swansea underground Sewage Works ; BP Queens Dock; coal loading; BP Llandarcy (now closed but site contaminated); an old arsenic works and numerous patent fuel factories and the stacks of other chemical works and refineries, whose smoking chimneys can easily be seen a few miles away.
Unsurprisingly, approval in 1999 by Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council for a ‘Materials Recovery and Energy Centre’ at Crymlyn Burrows caused little local reaction. But residents and the local branch of Friends of the Earth did object. The residents’ objections – one from every house in Crymlyn Burrows (some houses even sent two) - were weak, due to the fact that the local authority told lies to the small, trusting community.

And, of course, the name of the plant sounds quite innocuous, even green. Further, in the council’s brochure for the plant the artist’s impression had conveniently omitted the 40-metre smokestack that says ‘incinerator’ to many people. In August 2001 The Independent newspaper asked Neath Port Talbot Council chief executive Frank Sawyers why this was and he answered, “I don’t know.”
To add to this deception, council leader Noel Crowley stated at various public meetings that it was “not an incinerator”. This was to be repeated at every available opportunity, including on a local radio interview and it was echoed by the incinerator company’s representatives.

Residents did not know what the term ‘Waste-to–Energy’ meant (who does?); only that it was not an incinerator.
The plant is supposedly designed to handle municipal solid waste (i.e. mainly household and commercial trade waste). The plant will also attempt to handle a smaller amount of industrial wastes. The residents have been told that the plant is not designed to handle hazardous (‘special’) wastes. That’s not to say they won’t apply for a licence modification in the future, though. Both the council and the Environment Agency have made much of the fact that the plant is not a ‘mass-burn incinerator’, where all wastes entering the plant are burnt. However, this is a ‘dirty mouth’ recycling facility, where all the waste is mixed
and contaminated, which means that it is impossible to separate the wastes effectively. Papers in particular will be so contaminated that recycling them is not an option. The only solution would be kerbside recycling of clean materials. In fact the very existence of the plant is a barrier to investigating this proposal, as it would make a mockery of the whole process of mechanical separation of the waste at their wonderful ‘state of the art’ centre.

Local press recently reported that Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council has been given more than £1m by the National Assembly to enable it to ‘take a detailed look at kerbside collections of everything from glass to plastic and paper’. Why? Further, the council’s partners in the incinerator, Bridgend Council, are investing community charge payers’ money into a new civic amenity site. Again, why? If all of their refuse can be adequately separated at the new ‘recycling centre’, what are they wasting this money for? Do they think that mechanical separation of waste is not possible? At £33m, the plant should be capable of doing a fox-trot with Tony Blair.

There will be recovery and recycling of some of the waste, but, as the figures below show some 85,177 tonnes (32.7%) will be formed into fuel pellets and burnt. Further, the 60,692 tonnes (23.32%) that will be composted (‘recycled’) will end up in landfill, as it is substandard. It is not without smells and hazardous bacteria and fungi either.

The plant has plans to handle up to 260,200 tonnes of waste per year and that will be dealt with as follows:

But oh, dear! All is not as it would seem….

And, pumped out into our air…

So it is costing £33m to recycle just 21.81% of the refuse. How cheap is that?

The Environment Agency granted a permit to operate to the plant in May 2002 that will allow annual mass emissions of pollutants into the air, up to the following amounts:

The community finds out
In early 2001 the local people were alerted to the fact that they were to get an incinerator on their doorstep by a meeting held by the Socialist Workers Party. Members of the local community had to find out rapidly what the hazards of incinerators were. Jackie Ryan, a local ‘mum-turned-activist’, speaks of a ‘steep learning curve on an old computer someone gave us. My ten-year-old daughter helped me a lot and we learned the value of the internet. Information from Ralph Ryder of Communities Against Toxics, and Greenpeace was also very useful.” At the beginning of 2001, a mass leaflet drop was followed by a march of about 150 protesters. Later, meetings were held with the council, Assembly members, the company, the local health authority and the Environment Agency. The health authority representative, when questioned about whether or not the incinerator would cause deaths, replied “Undoubtedly, yes.” And then he said that he wouldn’t live anywhere near one! The Environment Agency and the company behind the scheme didn’t seem to be really listening to the community and there were strong feelings that it was already decided.

The local Environment Agency office alone received 1500 objections in letters and petitions. The campaigners gave up collecting signatures for their petitions after the Environment Agency told them that the number of objections would not influence the decision – it was quality of objection, not quantity that would count.

Two campaign groups were formed — Stop the Incinerator Campaign (StIC ) and Parents Against INcinerators (PAIN). — because the incinerator was on the boundary of two councils.

For a few months there was a camp outside the plant on the main road, with banners saying ‘Welcome to Toxic Town’. Protests were made both at the plant and at the local Environment Agency offices. A press release by the Environment Agency during the consultation period stated that the licence would be given, and when campaigners went to the Agency offices to speak to the person who had made this statement, they were refused contact. Local campaigner Mike Ryan chained himself to the radiator in the foyer, refusing to move until the EA representative agreed to speak to them. In May 2001 the community put its case to Environment Agency board members, who were meeting in Swansea and actually visited the incinerator site. All of these actions gained both local and national publicity.