Yorkshire Evening Post
Saturday 30th January 2010

DELIGHT AT 

WASTE SITE 

VICTORY

CAMPAIGNERS today claimed a victory after controversial plans for a waste transfer facility in Leeds were shelved following months of protests.
School children from Kirkstall Valley Primary School in Burley were among hundreds of people objecting to the plans for the new expanded plant at Evanston Avenue in Kirkstall.

read full story here.

A New Hope

VICTORY !!

Burley / Kirkstall woke up to a bright sunny day this morning, the air was fresh and people had a spring in their step. A great cloud had been lifted from the area allowing the process of cleaning the valley from its industrial past to move on. This coincided with the launch of the Kirkstall Vision document last night, of which one of the short term objectives was to oppose the Waste Transfer Station at Evanton Avenue.

Jubilation
At 17:32 yesterday afternoon the Leeds City Council press office issued the following press release:

Proposals for Kirkstall transfer station ‘not value for money’

Kirkstall should not be the home of a dedicated transfer site for Leeds’ new waste treatment facility, according to a recommendation being put to councillors.

Officials assessing bids by contractors looking to run the treatment facility for the city’s non-recycled waste are recommending to Leeds City Council’s Executive Board that plans to develop the Kirkstall waste site to include a dedicated transfer station are not good value for money and should be dropped.

The existing facility on Evanston Avenue, off Kirkstall Road, is currently a Household Waste Sorting Site as well as a transfer site for a range of recyclable materials and other specialist wastes.

Expanding the site to include a transfer station had been considered to provide another point for the delivery of black bin waste collected from households before being sent to the main treatment facility in east Leeds.

However, an independent analysis of the costs of redeveloping the site showed doing so did not represent good value for money and most of the city’s waste is already delivered directly to the Skelton Grange landfill site in south east Leeds, in close proximity to the two possible sites for the proposed treatment facility.

The Kirkstall site will, however, continue to receive waste and act as a sorting site for household waste. It currently handles around 26,000 tonnes a year

Councillor James Monaghan, Leeds City Council’s executive board member for environmental services, said:

“We have been able to look at the costs quoted by contractors in the running to develop the waste treatment facility and we can see it just wouldn’t be good value for money to put a further dedicated transfer station at Kirkstall.

“The process of finding a way to deal with our non-recyclable waste has been open to a whole range of different options that we have to examine one-by-one, from different sites to different kinds of technology.

“This is just one option we have looked at and rejected as not value for money.”

We don't need one after all

We of course welcome this decision and the council finally seeing sense, but do have to question why the proposals had come this far, with the council claiming to have scoured the whole of North / North West Leeds for an alternative site with out success, when the outcome is we don't need one after all. The question of the need for such a site had been put to Councillor Monaghan by the public and other elected members a year ago.

Surprise!

At a meeting with Council Officers less than 24 hours before the press release, the council were still maintaining their previous line, surely by then this was known? Perhaps we have nothing else to do in an evening!

 

BREAKING: Waste Transfer Plan Dropped

News is breaking that officials assessing the bids for the Residual Waste Treatment contact are to recommend to the Leeds City Council Executive Board that it be dropped from the plans.

More soon....

Waste Not Wanted - The Movie

As previously reported the children of Kirkstall Valley Primary School have expressed their concerns about proposed Waste Transfer Site, you can see them for yourself in the following video clip.



The video was filmed and produced by Interplay Theatre Group, based in Armley.

"Life near the dump" - Living by a modern Waste Transfer Station

This the Waste Transfer Station at Roundhill, Brighton and Hove is a modern facility run by one of the companies tendering for the Leeds contract. The following link will take you to an account of  their experiences living next to a modern waste transfer station.

http://www.roundhill.org.uk/main.php?sec=planning&p=Life_near_the_Dump

Worst smell on record in Princes Road

 The Waste Transfer Station and Materials Recovery Facility have proved, even in the early months of operation, to be far noisier and smellier neighbours. On 4th August, the day before my summer holiday, I photographed yet another breach of The Waste Transfer Station's operating conditions. On my return, I found a message from residents living on the south side of Princes Road, drawing my attention to the dreadful odour of rubbish in Princes Road on 11th August. The day after my return on 13th August, the whiff of stale rubbish hit me as I opened my front door. It was being carried in gusts of wind. I experienced this nuisance from several vantage points in Princes Road. Previously, I had told the Council's Environmental Health Officer that the main nuisance was noise, having only experienced isolated instances of disagreeable odour. The strength and prevalence of the smell which I experienced on 13th August have convinced me that there are two major nuisances which need to be addressed. 

Thursday 10th December, 7pm

Woodhouse Community Centre

Woodhouse Street, LS6 2NY

Kirkstall Vally Primary School Governors have a delegation to hte Leeds North West Inner Area Committee on Thursday. This meeting is open to the public, a good turnout will show the strength of feeling over this issue in the area.

Turn up to show the council that their waste is not wanted in Kirkstall!

Sign the Petition.

Follow the campaign on Facebook

A65 Kirkstall Road Traffic Assessments

One item that will have to be considered for any planning application is the effects of traffic generated by any development and the capacity of the road network to accomodate that traffic.

In the last couple of years the Council have conducted at least two studies of traffic flows on the A65: the A65 Transport Assessment May 2005 and A65 A660 Traffic Flows Feb 2007.

The 2005 study
This comes to some pretty daming conclusions about the ability of the A65 to take more traffic, the additional demand on the road in this study DOES NOT include: The Kirkstall Forge Development; the BHS/Alders development; the Kirkstall District Centre or the Waste Transfer Site (the previous site had burnt down before the study):

5.0 Conclusion

• the A65 is at capacity, 1950 vehicles per hour at the cordon, 1000 elsewhere 

• there is evidence of peak spreading with more trips travelling outside the peak periods 

• public transport opportunities have been studied and are considered unlikely to result in a significant mode shift to either buses or trains. Potentially 590 trips have been identified 

• future growth at the Airport has been assessed and will worsen conditions on the A65 and surrounding network. An additional 1260 car trips per day have been identified. 

• developer generated trips have been assessed and these will worsen conditions on the A65 and surrounding network. 3310 additional 2 way peak hour trips have been identified from developments with traffic generations available 

• few opportunities to improve highway capacity have been identified. The possible improvements to the Outer Ring Road were not available to this study. There are plans for a quality bus corridor. One junction at Menston has been identified as providing additional capacity. 

• the A65 does not have the capacity to carry all the identified additional trips in the peak periods

 The 2007 study 
This shows week day 'peak spreading' with the hours between 07:00 to 10:00 and 16:00 to 19:00 now almost reaching the capacity of the road.  The weekend figures show significantly fewer traffic movements , however anyone that lives near or uses the A65 Kirkstall Road at a weekend knows that it is often at the point of gridlock, so not alot will move!


So where does this leave the Waste Transfer Site?
Any developer would have to demonstrate how their plans comply with Planning Policy Statement 10: Planning for Sustainable Waste Management (PPS10), including:

21. In deciding which sites and areas to identify for waste management facilities, waste planning authorities should:
    (i) assess their suitability for development against each of the following criteria:

• the extent to which they support the policies in this PPS; 

• the physical and environmental constraints on development, including existing and proposed neighbouring land uses (see Annex E); 

• the cumulative effect of previous waste disposal facilities on the well-being of the local community, including any significant adverse impacts on environmental quality, social cohesion and inclusion or economic potential; 

• the capacity of existing and potential transport infrastructure to support the sustainable movement of waste, and products arising from resource recovery, seeking when practicable and beneficial to use modes other than road transport.
  

We feel the last two are going to be a pretty tall order.