Andy D'Agorne

The next ward committee meeting on Oct 11th at 7pm at St George's School will give residents the chance to discuss ward schemes and spending priorities for the 2007-08 year.

The Green Party council budget amendment this year included restoring the Lib Dem cuts to ward budgets, a cause that has recently been taken up by Labour. It's a pity that Labour didnt put any amendments of their own when it would have counted in February this year!  

The report by Transport Planner Terry Walker to the Executive on Sept 26th is 'totally inadequate'.

'It fails to address significant elements of  the original council motion which I proposed to full council in January. The motion explicitly called on the Executive Member for Planning and Transport to bring a paper looking at the case for the council taking more direct control of bus services in the city, by means of a Quality Contract.It also called for work with local MP's to secure stronger democratic control of bus services".

The officer report does not even mention the legislative framework for doing this or any contact with MP's , concentrating solely on the bus fares issue. Even though the motion did not commit the council to any action other than investigating the issue further, the Lib Dem ruling group had still insisted in January that the motion be referred to the Executive without debate. It has taken them eight months to fulfil their constitutional requirement to discuss this at Executive, with a report that fails to respond adequately to
the proposal.

This just highlights how the current administration, now strengthened by the new constitutional arrangements, intends to sideline any debate on its policies. The report itself is just a light-weight explanation of why commercial bus companies have to increase fares, with no analysis of any alternative strategies for the council to influence the company."
To view the report go to:

http://democracy.york.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.asp?CId=102&MId=594&Ver=4

PS This issue was finally reported to the Executive on Feb 27th 2007, now acknowledging that the government is offering othermechanisms to give greater powers to local councils on bus service provision - we shall see!

The Lib Dems are working very hard now to portray themselves as the party of the environment. This extends to the national push to rubbish the Greens - their lastest ward newsletter gives a very twisted account of 'the Green Party's record' in York. Labour are equally keen to puff their environmental credentials.

We are very pleased to see how much environmental issues have figured in the recent newsletters of other parties. Since two Green Party councillors were elected in 2003 issues such as recycling and waste disposal have had a high profile. After years of neglect by Labour, the Lib Dems have managed to increase recycling rates from a very low base, but now seem to lack the vision to go for the higher rates needed to avoid a costly &  polluting incinerator somewhere in the region.

Under pressure from our campaigning, Council leader Steve Galloway has stated publicly that there will not be an incinerator in York, but has then gone on to agree an expensive private funding strategy which fails to rule out incineration.

Whilst a sensible waste strategy is very important, we also believe that green politics are about much more than that.  Over the last three years we have campaigned with local people to protect green spaces and prevent over-development in York, to retain local community facilities and services, to make our streets and pavements safer and pleasanter and to improve energy efficiency thus reducing fuel bills.

Park and Ride

Unlike Labour, who put forward no budget proposals last year, we proposed a range of measures to reduce the level of the Lib Dem cuts to social and community services. These included a proposal to generate significant income from introducing a small charge (50p) for parking at the Park & Ride sites (which are currently used by some non-bus users as free car parks).  We have also campaigned for the Lib Dems to take seriously the need for action on air quality in the city.

Green councillors ask the difficult questions and work across the board on environmental, social and community issues sharing information with local people about what is going on, and putting on pressure for change. The more Green councillors we have the more pressure we will be able to exert. Both Labour and Lib Dems would prefer it if we were not there to blow the whistle on their power politics and property deals which have gone disasterously wrong when local people have challenged their high handed manoevrings. Whether or not we are there is up to YOU in May 2007.

»3:12 AM    »3 comments (0 )     »Send entry    

Posted by: andydag    in: Latest news

Extract from BBC article:

"One of the challenges of living in a media world without gatekeepers is that we need to take far more personal responsibility for assessing the quality of scientific information that we receive.

Fortunately, there are several ways in which the credibility of a website or blog can be quickly assessed:

• Check the data - strong scientific arguments are based on information from recognised sources that is available for public scrutiny, while weak or spurious arguments are often backed up with data from secondary sources or often no data at all
• Take note of the language - arguments couched in hyperbolic language may be masking a lack of understanding or sound information

Whatever precautions are taken there is always scope for being mislead or misdirected and for work to appear out of context - even when the exact figures are readily available for public scrutiny.

In the blogosphere the individual is king and everyone, rightly or wrongly, can become part of the news

This transition from individuals consuming their environmental news from traditional sources such as newspapers and television to selecting their news from the "electronic buffet" of the internet could have profound implications for the environmental movement and, for that matter, news providers such as the BBC.

The challenge has been laid down: how to effectively communicate in this new virtual world of shifting environmental values and consumption patterns?

There are no easy answers but if we don't respond quickly we run the risk of creating a generation of eco-illiterate consumers and voters at a crucial time for the Earth's diminishing resources.

In the blogosphere the individual is king and everyone, rightly or wrongly, can become part of the news. Dangers and opportunities abound and never before has there been a greater responsibility on individuals to be more discriminating news consumers.

But, at the end of the day, if you don't like what you are reading then you can always start your own blog and tell the world about it!

Well this week sees the launch of York's Car Club, with me being one of their first members, some two and a half years after I emailed council transport officers and senior councillors urging them to make such a creation a priority for the city. These have proved very successful in Germany and other countries but then they are more used to renting cars, houses etc when the British have been sold much more on the luxury of personal ownership.

Anyhow, this launch has come at a good time for our household, as our 19 year old left hand drive Peugeot and us finally parted company in June. Car ownership doesnt suit us: I had to get te car towed into the garage and shell out £300 in January after the handbrake seized on because of the combination of salt and standing still for two weeks! As the MOT approached the water pump went and the estimate for making it roadworthy (with new brake pipes, shock absorber, tyre, radiator..) was £600! So Rosamaria (as my mother had christened her when she bought it from new) was donated to the budding mechanics at York College to practice their skills on.

We hired a smart new Astra for our summer camping trip and now will have access to a car for as little as one hour if we need one on occasions when taxi bus or bike are not suitable. Although we will probably not save money overall because we were not paying any depreciation on the old car, it will no longer be the lottery of trying to guess when the next major part will give up, and when we do use a car it will be the latest low emission model.              

Reprise...

Tomorrow's York Press will feature the extraordinary tale of how the council Lib Dem leader Steve Galloway was so incensed to hear that a Green councillor (me) might feature in the local press supporting 'their' new WhizzGo City Car Club (of which I am a member) that the leader INSTRUCTED the company that they were not allowed to use me in any of their publicity (including this feature)!   Since York Press were in the process of arranging this at the time, they will obviously be reporting this fact in the morning! I have raised the matter with the Chief Executive, since the contract is with the authority and the feature was intended to be purely to promote awareness of the way in which local people might benefit from the facility. This action by the leader could also be seen as bringing the council into disrepute by attempting to put a political 'straight jacket' on a council initiative, thereby restricting the independent judgement of the company for purely political reasons.  

This week the City of York Lib Dem Executive will push ahead with a joint bid with the county for £65m of PFI funds to build a 'waste treatment facility'. York's preferred option is to have a MBT plant that churns up residual waste to make RDF Refuse Derived Fuel that can be fed into an 'Energy from Waste' incinerator. Leader Steve Galloway has said that there is unlikely to be a suitable site for this in York! Meanwhile Leeds and just about every other authority in England and Wales is going theough the same deliberations. Which is worse, hand over a 25 year contract to the private sector to process our waste or pay massive penalties for not reducing landfill? Well the Greens say that we have to drastically reduce the volume of waste as well as up the levels of composting and recycling.

 In case you had any illusions about the benefits of 'Energy from Waste' it is worth noting that 88% of the energy created could be acheived just from recovering the aluminium in the waste (as compared to smelting fresh bauxite to replace that lost in the incinerator)

Here is the experience of those living near te Newcastle incinerator - a few questions you might want to ask your councillor about?

The following is the story of the infamous Newcastle, Byker incinerator. It was such a disaster that Newcastle Council and a citizens group are now acting  together to find alternatives for dealing with their waste.

  Newcastle's experience of incineration. The Council and residents now say, ‘No incinerator ever again'.

  Get Real ......Evidence from Byker

You can't express concern about global warming while at the same time recommending the burning of waste.

Permitted emissions of toxic gases are measured by the tonne.^[1]

The range of emissions from municipal waste incineration is huge-there is as a consequence, great uncertainty about the potential health impacts of a mixture of these emissions. The flue gas will contain hundreds and possibly thousands of pollutants-many of which it will not be possible to identify but which will often be absorbed onto the finest respirable particulates.^[2] K. Jay and Steiglitz ^[3]published a paper in Chemosphere listing just some of these emissions. Normally they would remain unidentified by the operator or the EA.

Burning waste does not get rid of waste. It concentrates the dangerous toxins by altering them into ash and gases that still need to go somewhere. Landfill and air fill

Yet industry tells us that strong regulations, stringent monitoring and improved filtration systems make the new technologies safe.

But the more efficient the filter at the stack, the more toxic is the fly ash and the more ultra fine are the particulate emissions from the stack.

As you reduce the mass of pm10's you have no effect on the ultra fine particle level.^[4]

Particulate research suggests that it is these tiniest, the ultra fine particles less than pm2.5, which are not captured, that are capable of penetrating the deep lung.^[5] Also substances like gold, platinum or ruthenium in bulk is pretty inert. If you make them into nano particles or ultra fine particles they become highly reactive. Ultra fine particles are present in much bigger numbers, but weigh virtually nothing. Emissions are regulated by mass. ^[6] When rats were exposed to particles Professor Donaldson of Napier University Edinburgh, found that the smaller the particle the bigger the amount of inflammation was produced. It didn't matter what the particles were made of, it was the size that was critical.

 An  unsuccessful experiment.  The reclamation/recycling site that mechanically processed, dried then made the waste into Refuse Derived Fuel as pellets was operated by Newcastle City Council then by SITA.UK.

The adjoining heat station was an energy from waste incinerator built in 1979 to heat a Byker housing estate.  Henley Burrows Ltd was the consultant engineers.^[7] In 1980 it was found that burning RDF produced more ash than expected causing problems with the operation of the boilers.^[8]

By the end of 1998 RDF pellet making was abandoned as being too expensive and too difficult to comply with EU standards for pollution control. But plans were submitted to expand the incinerator and RDF process, ^[9]enabling it to burn.

Cheap Heating - what a joke!

Those on the heating scheme complained about persistent breakdowns, high costs and the roads and footpaths having to be dug up frequently. One resident got the shock of his life when the footpath blew up in his face as he walked along.

It cost £8 for a one bed roomed flat, £11 to £15 for a family house, every week, heating on or not.^{[10] [11]} All year.

Now waste is not burned the heating cost to householder has been reduced by 14%.That's a start.

Monitored by the EA?......It's industry self regulating.

Grievances about the incinerator and the adjoining reclamation station where the waste was processed were long standing.  Complaints of flies, rats, dust, noise and fires. The roof had blown off, and the main stack had caught fire. In 1996 two days of black snow was spewed from the RDF stack.^[12] A variety of synthetic musk  scents were sprayed in the reclamation RDF side to try to mask the stink of standing mixed waste. It was a revolting combination. Workers had to work in it and people close by had this stench wafting into their houses at all times.  Synthetic musk accumulates in our bodies too. ^[13]

There is 20% long term sick in the east end of Newcastle.^[14]

The workers in the RDF process frequently had skin rashes and stomach problems. They had to climb in to the machinery to free it as it was frequently jamming. On average there was one fire a week. Once a fire took hold in all the internal pipe work, which was very frightening and dangerous. 

Though the RDF process was not allowed to handle medical waste, residents frequently saw hospital vans arriving at the site.Workers complained at being expected to handle used needles and the like and had been pricked by them. A fetus was found in a container.

Experiments in burning different waste products were tried  such as formica dust and chicken muck. The formica dust flared and the workers were lucky not to be hurt.

Then SITA hired a firm to alter the RDF facility

There was an explosion with fire balls shooting out of the RDF stack. One witness said that she thought the whole place was going to explode. It was like a huge roman candle firework.^[15] A fire ball caused a fire close to the public road and footpath and only yards from people's homes. I've got pictures to prove it.

SITA said that there had been no explosion or fire balls and no fire engine out side the plant.^[16]

We must not forget the toxic ash

I was a new allotment holder. Gardeners told me that ash from the incinerator had been spread on allotment footpaths. Soon the Council Officers admitted 2,000 tonnes had gone to allotments, parks, and riding schools. The Council had recorded it as recycling. In some cases it had been down for 7 years.

After taking advice from Ralph Ryder of Communities Against Toxics^[17], I first approached the Environment Agency.

The inspector was incredulous. " This was a responsible firm that wouldn't do such a thing". Then he had the nerve to ask me to find the evidence. Next I approached the University and the Health Authority. This led to sampling and testing of the ash and the first report^[18] disclosed a massive contamination with dioxins/furans^[19] and a major contamination of copper, lead and zinc in the  majority of samples. Cadmium contamination was considerable too. 5ng/kg of dioxins was the target level, which is considered background level. Between 11 and 4,224 ng/kg of dioxins were found.

The industry has known since 1977 that fly ash contains dioxins/furans.^[20]

This was a mix of fly ash from the bag filters, the lime dust and bottom ash from the grate. It was not a homogenous mix. Also there was always more bottom ash than fly ash so with such high results it indicates to me that bottom ash is probably high in dioxins too.

The EA licence says that,  "Spent lime and ash from the bag filter will be put into a skip under permanent cover to prevent fugitive releases into the air, deposition directly onto land or leaching of metals. This will be transported to a local landfill." It goes on to say, "The Company shall undertake appropriate measurement and analysis of all releases from the process which are designated for off site disposal to ensure that accurate information on the nature, quantity and type of waste may be given to those persons or companies disposing of the waste". Neither of these instructions was followed.

The Director of Public Health made recommendations

to wash and peel vegetables, not to eat eggs and poultry  and not to allow children under two onto the allotments.^[21] When the Director of Health and the toxicologist organising the testing were offered some beautiful, freshly washed allotment but at the time of the proposed expansion the incinerator had grown strawberries they both quickly declined.^[22] Maybe the strawberries needed peeling?

Would you peel a strawberry?  What about children of 3, 4 or 5 years? Are they safe? What about the children that had been weaned on eggs and had eaten them all their young lives?

Remember  the 5ng/kg  target. More ash testing revealed one allotment with 9,500 ng/kg of dioxins.^[23]  The EA and the FSA took part in this 2^nd report and did not include children under 10 in their calculations. They ignored the potential problem for the most vulnerable.

Ironically the allotment site closest to the incinerator received no ash, but investigations as to the possible impact of emissions have led to a complete remediation at a cost of £2m. One reading of dioxins in soil was 1,310ng/kg.^[24]

The Council and the incinerator company eventually pleaded Guilty in the Crown Court and were fined.

It has cost the tax payer a fortune.(fines, testing, clean up and remediation costs). The incinerator is now closed and the Council says no more burning in Newcastle.

The Waste industry now says that Byker incinerator was one of the older generation and that modern ones are different, been kept up to date so as to comply with regulation and was fêted on the Energy from Waste website as an award winning, "State of the Art" plant they were proud of.

Newcastle City Council was proud of it too. They had been led to believe it was the answer to their problem of compliance with recycling/recovery targets. They had completely disregarded door step collection of separated items for recycling. So Newcastle figures for true recycling was 3% and is still one of the lowest in the Country.

The Waste Industry & Mixed Waste

First create the problem then claim to have the expertise to put it right and get paid for it! When it doesn't work get paid again for coming up with either the old useless solution calling it by a new name or experimenting on us  for 20 years to then say it was old. The cycle runs round yet again. Talk about a licence to print money!

One of the most galling messages thrust down our throats was -            "it's monitored by the Environment Agency." Yet, for 6 years or more the EA just wasn't aware of the breach of their own licence which led to the dumping of toxic ash into the public domain.

Government fails to give leadership and to realise that the EA has neither the resources nor the health knowledge to protect us. Science is far ahead of regulations and the EA

Waste incineration is a non-sustainable,  "end of pipe"^[25] technology, which is essentially hazardous and relies on a series of highly technical solutions, which have to work 24 hours a day. It falsely suggests that there is a disposal route for toxic products and removes the incentive to industry to produce only that which can safely be reused and recycled.

There is an urgent need to reduce the emissions of (POPs) persistent organic pollutants. They cannot be controlled by limiting releases but they must be phased out. Persisting with burning waste will not help with these aims.^[26]

Valerie Barton 4.11.04

Note: On behalf of the community where she lived, St. Peter's Residents Association, Val Barton first raised the issue of deposition of ash from Byker Energy from Waste Incinerator with the Environment Agency and with Newcastle & North Tyneside NHS Health Authority in 1999. She served on the Steering Group set up by the Health Authority to monitor the research to be carried out by Newcastle University. She was an allotment holder and represented 20 allotments in the east end of Newcastle on the Allotments Working Group. She was a founder member of CAIR (Newcastle's Campaign Against the Incineration of Refuse) and of BaN Waste (Byker & Newcastle Waste Group) and sat on its Select Committee to hear expert evidence and make recommendations to the City Council for alternative waste strategies. She is a Director of Zero Waste Alliance UK, a not for profit company applying for charitable status to promote the concept of zero waste. She and her husband now live in rural Northumberland.

^[1] HM Inspectorate of Pollution, ESL Energy Supplies Ltd, Variation to Authorisation and Introductory Note, Byker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, AF7690/AN2927-02-19/12/95, p 6.

^[2] Further Comments on an application for a variation to IPC  Authorisation  No AF 7690  September 2000 A Watson  of Public Interest Consultants

^[3] K. Jay & L. Steiglitz,  "Identification and quantification of Volatile Organic Compounds in Emissions of Waste Incineration Plants"

^[4] Dr. V.C Howard evidence to  BaN Waste Select Committee 15.9.03

^[5] Maynard, R.L., and Howard C.V. Ed., Particulate Matter: Properties and effects on health 1999, BIOS Scientific Publishers Ltd., ISBN 1 85996 172 X.

^[6] See evidence of Dr. C.V. Howard, Toxicologist,  to BaN Waste Select Committee, 15 Sept. 2003

^[7] Mobbs Environmental Investigations, the Byker RDF Plant and Land Contamination in Newcastle, November 2000, p 23.

^[8] Mobbs Environmental Investigations, Ibid, p. 25 and see ETSU Report B-1088,1984. Contract no. E/5A/CON/1088/174/072. See Annexes A2 to A7, pp A-6 to A-18.

^[9] Contract, Heat & Power Ltd., Application for a Variation to IPC Authorisation IPC No. AF 7690, Oct 1999

^[10] Byker Stakeholders, St. Peter's Residents Association - Renewable Energy, 24 August, 2000

^[11] This compared with £3 per week for a three storey town house run by gas in nearby St. Peter's Basin and £3.50 per week for a gas fired community heating scheme in Clayton Street, Newcastle, See Byker Stakeholders, Ibid, p. 4.

^[12] Archer, Craig, Chimney belches out clouds of filth, Newcastle Evening Chronicle, October 16, 1996

^[13] A WWF Report Chemical Trespass; A toxic legacy June 1999 Elizabeth Salter-Head

^[14] Illustrations of Deprivation Across The Target Area, Newcastle East End Partnership Information Pack, A Newcastle University study for the Northern Regions Health Authority (1994) using  social and health statistics placed Walker and Byker as the 4^th and 5^th most deprived wards in the region (678 wards).

^[15] A letter from a  witness to the eruption/fire from RDF stack P. Anderson May 2001

^[16] Garvey, J.C., Regional Director, SITA in a letter to Mrs. V. Barton, 11 May, 2001 "There was no explosion, no fire balls were created and flames did not leap from the stack on the reclamation site..."

^[17] Ralph Ryder, Communities Against Toxics, PO Box 29, Ellesmere Port, CH66 3TX, Tel/Fax: 0151 339 5473, Email: ralph.ryder@communities-against-toxics.org.uk

^[18] Pless-Mulloli, Dr. Tanja, Edwards, Dr. Richard, Päpke, Olaf and Schilling, Bernard, Report on the analysis of PCCD/PCDF and Heavy Metals in footpaths and soil samples related to the Byker Incinerator, Dept. of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Ergo  Forschungsgesellschaft mbh, May 2000.

^[19] Pless-Mulloli, Edwards, Päpke & Schilling, Ibid, p. 2

^[20] Pless-Mulloli, Edwards, Päpke & Schilling, Ibid, p. 24

^[21] Cresswell, Dr. Tricia, Director of Public Health, Newcastle & North Tyneside NHS Health Authority, Byker Incinerator/Heat Station, 26 May, 2000

^[22] Young, Peter and Dickinson, Peter, Gran's fury at Health fears in allotments, Evening Chronicle, May, 25, 2000

^[23] Pless-Mulloli, Dr.Tanja,  Edwards, Dr. Richard, Päpke, Olaf & Schilling, Bernd., Full Technical Report PCDD/PCDF and Heavy Metals in soil and egg Samples from Newcastle Allotments, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Ergo Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, 10 May, 2001, p. 6

^[24]Dr. Tanja Pless-Mulloli,, Päpke, Olaf & Schilling, Bernd., PCDD/PCDF and Heavy Metal Contamination at Walker Road Allotment, Newcastle upon Tyne, Dept. of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Newcastle upon Tyne & Ergo Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, July, 2000

^[25] Howard, Dr. C.V.,  Toxic Products of Waste Incineration, June 30, 1999.

^[26] Howard, Dr. C. V., Toxic Products of Waste Incineration, Ibid

_______________________________________________

»5:26 AM    »1 comments (0 )     »Send entry    

Posted by: andydag    in: Dealing with our waste

Al Gore's film 'An Inconvenient Truth' is now on release and by all accounts is a pretty scary wake up call about the tipping points that are now being passed on the road to global warming. Thinking about this reminded me that we leafletted outside the Odeon when 'The Day after Tomorrow' was showing... that was before the real Tsunami in the Pacific and the devastation that his New Orleans with hurricane Katrina last year. Now the Odeon is boarded up, so more people will drive out to Clifton Moor - we will be going to City Screen to see it.

Ward money was earmarked for improving the frontage of the shops, but yet again red tape is preventing anything being done. I even tried to suggest that the money we had might be paid over to one of the shopkeepers to get the work done, but the council is unable to do this, for fear it might aquire liaibility in the future for repairing and maintaining the private frontage. So the situation persists that the scruffy run down appearance remains and the wishes of local people voted in a ward ballot are again frustrated, even though the money is there in a budget.

 A similar situation exists at Broadway Shops, where cars are able to drive onto the private frontages putting the lives of small children at risk and making access difficult for the elderly and those with buggies. A proposal of mine to put paint markings or coloured surface and pedestrian symbols in appropriate places has come up against the same bureaucratic obstacle. In this instance I am going to see whether we cant persuade the Local shop Coop to do something about it.

A sensible proposal to indicate an 'IN' and 'OUT' to the narrow service road has similarly foundered on the basis that the council might then be liable for any accidents (less likely than they are now, but not the council's problem!) On suggesting I might do it myself to an officer, if this scheme was blocked, I was told in no uncertain terms that I would be well advised to take legal advice. The authority seems to be trapped into a 'cant do that' mentality. The only option that officers could come up with involves a cost of £20,000 (including £3000 simply to get a one way street order and illuminated direction signs, rather than something simply painted on the road), when we proposed to do it for less than £1000.

People of Fordlands Road have found a sudden renewed interest in their plight after the Greens drew attention to the Lib Dem council decision to cut their bus service to once per hour. After we gathered names on a petition against the cuts, we arranged a press photo with local residents on Friday, just prior to the change coming into effect on Monday Sept 4th. Shortly afterwards, the local Lib Dem councillor was spotted going round collecting in a questionaire delivered the previous day. Helping him in this task was Executive Member for Transport Cllr Anne Reid and Environment Executive Member Cllr Andrew Waller! We are meeting with Cllr Reid and ward Cllr Keith Aspden on Tuesday to discuss the issue on behalf of local residents. With an across the board election in York in 2007, every local issue is going to take on a higher profile.