Earlier this month (November 2009) LetsRecycle published an article by the International Solid Waste Association’s Jeff Cooper. The piece focussed on the Thermal Treatment Working Group of the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), and included the following sorry tale:
When the meeting was first planned it had been expected that the Lakeside plant would be fully operational. Sadly, when we visited the plant in September it was still a construction site and staff were trying to get over the latest in a series of problems that have progressively delayed both the plant’s commissioning and now full opening.
On this occasion the problem occurred during the commissioning trials which started in June 2009. In August 2009 some non-conforming waste containing gas cylinders was delivered in defiance of the plant’s tight specification for its waste acceptance criteria. Only municipal solid waste from collection rounds and some office and retail commercial wastes is contracted to be delivered into the Lakeside plant.
Unfortunately, the gas cylinders not only got into the Lakeside waste bunker but were picked up by the grab and fed through to one of the two boiler feeds to the furnace and exploded, causing damage which has had to be repaired. In addition, the whole bunker of waste had to be sorted to ensure that any other non-conforming wastes were eliminated. The plant will therefore not be fully operational until 2010, two years late.
The 400,000 tonne-a-year capacity Lakeside Energy from Waste Ltd plant is a 50:50 joint venture between the largest privately-owned waste management companies, Grundon, which is based in the Colnbrook area and Viridor, a subsidiary of the major water company Pennon, which is based in the south west of England.
The original £160 million budget for the plant’s development will be exceeded by a considerable amount…
Despite the fact that the site is only a few metres outside the Greater London boundary, only a limited amount of waste is going from London into the Lakeside plant. Waste is contracted to come from Wiltshire 120km to the west, Dorset 80km to the south of the plant and more locally from Slough and Berkshire. Clearly there is a need to rationalise waste movements within England in order to minimise the adverse impacts of the excessive and potentially unnecessary transport of waste…
This story suggests poor site management, which is hardly reassuring given they will be operating this facility for 25 years+.