Decision time for Parkwood landfill

Plans to tip more active waste at Parkwood landfill are worth an estimated £34 million to site operators Viridor. They have now submitted the long-awaited planning application and local residents are intensifying their campaign against it.

At present the site is divided into four cells. Viridor have planning permission to tip active waste (the kind that rots) in three cells. Permission for the fourth (Area D in the application), on land leased from Sheffield City Council, covers only the tipping of inert waste.

In the application lodged on 21 July 2005 Viridor estimates that ‘rephasing’ of the site – tipping active waste on Area D – will reduce the life of the site by eight to nine years. This is because active waste is more readily available than inert waste. Without this change, it would take another twenty years to fill Area D. When the site is full, it will be restored as public open space.

Viridor also propose to transfer inert material from Area D so as to create a 50 metre buffer zone between the Standish estate which borders the north-east area of the site. At present active waste can be tipped just five metres from the recently-built houses.

“The objective… of the application… is to reduce the impact on local residents of the development,” Viridor claim. Restoration of the site to public use would begin nearest the houses and continue in stages towards the southwest where Area D lies.

Paul Antcliffe of Parkwood Concerned Tenants, Residents and Businesses Group, which opposes the application, points out that there is no reason why Viridor should not install the buffer zone and carry out the staged restoration under the existing planning consent. He argues that these benefits are being offered to win local residents over to support the new plan.

Objectors argue that what Viridor calls a “small proportion of additional nonhazardous [ie active] waste” would be a third as much again as the amount currently being deposited. Not only the volume of active waste but the period during which active waste would be dumped would be increased. Active waste is the source of the odours, irritations and pests reported by local residents.

According to Viridor’s figures, it would take twelve years to fill all four cells with active waste. If the additional waste assigned to Area D in their plans were divided between the existing three cells, then they would be full about four years earlier, and restoration of those cells could take place eight years from now.

To fill Area D with inert waste at the rate of 50,000 tonnes a year would take twenty years, so the area has a capacity of 1 million tonnes. The site receives 105,000 tonnes a year of inert waste, but 55,000 tonnes is used to cover the active waste. If the three existing active waste cells were completed in eight years, then all 105,000 tonnes would be available to fill Area D, making it possible to fill it in a further six years – fourteen rather than twenty years from now.

All these figures are estimates, including Viridor’s. But fourteen years from now is 2021, which is the same date for completion given by the previous site owners.

The cost of tipping inert waste is about £10 per tonne (not including tax). This figure is unlikely to increase due to inert waste (mainly hardcore) being unavailable. Viridor have admitted it is difficult to obtain it. Assuming a generous 10% of this is for site operating costs, that would mean that the income from Area D over its life would be £9 million.

The cost of tipping active waste is currently about £30 per tonne (not including tax). Allowing 10% for operating costs, Area D would generate a total income after deduction of costs of £27 million. But the cost of tipping active waste is forecast to rise sharply, to as much as £66 per tonne by 2011. Taking a figure halfway between these two of £48 per tonne gives a total income after costs of over £43 million. The difference between that figure and the £9 million that would be generated by inert waste would be £34 million – the estimated value to Viridor of this planning application.

Viridor Waste Management Ltd is part of the Pennon Group plc which has assets of £2.7 billion. Contact: Dan Cooke, External Affairs Manager, (01823) 721400.

Although the formal deadline for comments about this planning application is given in a letter to local residents as 24 August 2005, the planning department has assured the Messenger that all comments received after that date will be taken into consideration.

Comments should be sent to Development Services, Howden House, 1 Union Street, Sheffield S1 2SH, or email: planningdc@sheffield.gov.uk, quoting reference 05/02877/ful.

Campaign contacts

Parkwood Landfill Action Group, c/o Green City Action, Abbeyfield House, Abbeyfield Road, Sheffield S4 7AT, http://www.shefinfo.org.uk/parkwood/, email: parkwoodaction@fsmail.net

Parkwood Concerned Tenants, Residents and Businesses Group, 276 2353, http://mysite.wanadoomembers.co.uk/pctrbg, email: paul@paulantcliffe.wanadoo.co.uk.

by Andrew Green