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!