Decision on Calvert Incinerator

Today the County Council has decided to award its Energy From Waste contract to WRG who have already submitted a planning application to the County Council to build a new incinerator at Greatmoor Farm near Calvert.

The County Council website states:

'On 29th November 2010, the County Council’s Cabinet chose to award Preferred Bidder status to Waste Recycling Group (WRG) to treat our household waste, left over after recycling and composting. The company proposes to build an energy from waste (EfW) plant at Greatmoor, near Calvert, north Buckinghamshire.

Although the Council had agreed to appoint Covanta Energy as its Preferred Bidder in September last year, whilst clarifying the terms of their appointment, the company made the Council aware of a commercial matter, which impacted on aspects of their bid. As this might have affected the evaluation of the final bids the Council were legally required to re-open discussions with both Covanta Energy and WRG.

Since March of this year, the project team have been working with both bidders to ensure the proposals they put forward were going to provide the best solution for the county. In September the final bids were received and evaluated by our technical, legal and financial experts and project team against pre-agreed criteria. WRG were the highest scoring bidder, which means Covanta Energy, with their facility at Stewartby, Bedfordshire has not been selected.'

This is a very disappointing decision. Since 60% of the county's waste is generated in the south of the county (Wycombe, Marlow, Chesham, Amersham, Beaconsfield, Gerrards Cross etc etc) there will be hundreds of lorries travelling hundreds of miles across the county to bring all the waste to Calvert. On the proximity principle the incinerator should have been located in South Bucks where the waste is generated.

However, the decision has been made (subject to call in) and we have to live with the consequences. One of the conditions of the contract is that all waste lorries to the plant will have to enter via a new spur road from the A41. We will be very concerned to ensure that this is strictly controlled, and that waste lorries are kept out of our beautiful villages.

Congratulations to SAVI for all their hard work in trying to stop this sad decision.