Council leaders in Newcastle have been accused of “preventing future generations from reducing waste and recycling more”, after refusing to back out of a £2 billion waste incinerator deal.
Newcastle City Council’s Labour cabinet this week confirmed that it will not withdraw from the Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TVERF) contract it is entering into alongside six other North East authorities.
That is despite a full council vote earlier this month in which a majority of councillors urged that Newcastle pull out of the controversial scheme.
Environmental campaigners have railed against the project, which would see 450,000 tonnes of rubbish sent to be burned at the proposed incinerator near Redcar each year, fearing that it will lead to more pollution and harm efforts to recycle more and reduce waste.
The contract for the development, which councils say is required to deal with residual waste that would otherwise be sent to landfill, could run for up to 40 years and has been valued at more than £2 billion.
Image: Facebook
Newcastle Lib Dem councillor Gareth Kane said that the city council’s minority Labour administration had “decided to lock us into the second worst waste disposal option for decades to come”.
The Ouseburn representative, who led the motion to pull the city out of the deal, added: “So much for ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’, for them it’s ‘burn, baby, burn’.”
Cllr Kane has previously cautioned that the TVERF, to be operated by Viridor, risks councils becoming stuck in a “feed the beast” mentality and missing out on new, cleaner technology.
Marion Williams, a long-time opponent of incinerators, acknowledged it would be a “massive risk” to pull out of the contract and that Newcastle did not want to “be like Birmingham and be knee-deep in waste”.
The former Labour cabinet member, who now represents the East End and Associates Independents, said she would try to renegotiate a shorter deal for the TVERF that would be less of a “detractor” to recycling efforts.
However, she said that the long-term solution must be to “turn the tap off and stop creating so much waste”.
Green Party councillor Nick Hartley added: “With Labour only just clinging on in Newcastle, it’s outrageous they are ignoring the voice of councillors and residents. Instead of moving away from incineration, they’re locking the city into a thirty year contract that will damage health, the environment, and cost us dear. Newcastle Labour’s legacy will be preventing future generations from reducing waste and recycling more.”
The TVERF is scheduled to open in 2029 and it is said that it would generate enough electricity to power 60,000 homes, as well as saving nearly 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year compared to landfill.
Newcastle Labour has also warned that exiting the contract now would risk exposing the city to major financial penalties, of up to £30 million.
A Newcastle Labour spokesperson: “The Lib Dems and Greens wanted to put tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money at risk without offering a single credible plan for how Newcastle should deal with its residual waste.
“When the Greens were last in power in Brighton, the streets were piled high with rubbish bags. Is that really what the opposition want for Newcastle?
“Labour is focused on delivering reliable, high quality frontline services for residents while the Lib Dems and Greens snipe from the sidelines.”
