Printed (by Authority) by CORRIE LTD., 48 Bucks Road, Douglas, Isle of Man REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS OF TYNWALD COURT DOUGLAS, Tuesday, 23rd February, 1988 at 10.30 a.m. Present: The Lieutenant-Governor (His Excellency Major-General Laurence New, C.B., C.B.E.). In the Council: The President of the Council (the Hon. J.C. Nivison, C.B.E.), the Lord Bishop (the Rt. Rev. Arthur Henry Attwell), the Attorney-General (Mr. T.W. Cain), Hon. R.J.G. Anderson, Hon. A.A. Callin, Mrs. B.Q. Hanson, .Mr. E. C. Irving, C.B.E., Hon. E.G. Lowey, Messrs. W.K. Quirk and J.N. Radcliffe, with Mr. T.A. Bawden, Clerk of the Council. In the Keys: The Speaker (the Hon. Sir Charles Kerruish, O.B.E.)(Garff); Hon. A.R. Bell and Brig. N.A. Butler, C.B.E. (Ramsey); Mr. R.E. Quine (Ayre); Hon. J.D.Q. Cannan (Michael); Mrs. H. Hannan (Peel); Mr. W.A. Gilbey (Glenfaba); Mr. B. Barton (Middle); Messrs. P. Karran, R.C. Leventhorpe and Hon. D.G. Maddrell (Onchan); Mr. B. May and Mrs. J. Delaney (Douglas North); Messrs. A.C. Duggan and D.C. Cretney (Douglas South); Hon. D.F.K. Delaney and Mr. P.W. Kermode (Douglas East); Messrs. J.C. Cain and Hon. G.V.H. Kneale (Douglas West); Hon. J.A. Brown (Castletown); Mr. D.J. Gelling (Malew and Santon); Hon. M.R. Walker, Dr. J.R. Orme and Mr. J. Corrin (Rushen); with Professor T. St.J N. Bates, Clerk of Tynwald. The Lord Bishop took the prayers. REFUSE INCINERATION — REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE ENVIRONMENT — DEBATE COMMENCED The Governor: Hon. members, we return to the main Agenda paper to item 18, Refuse Disposal. I call on the Minister for Local Government and the Environment to move. Mr. Delaney: Your Excellency, I beg to move — That the Report of the Department of Local Government and the Environment entitled 'Future Refuse Disposal — The Options’ be received and the recommendations contained therein adopted. Your Excellency, as we point out in our report, this will be the fourth report on Refuse Incineration — Report of the Department of Local Government and the Environment — Debate Commenced T854 TYNWALD COURT, TUESDAY, 23rd FEBRUARY, 1988 future refuse disposal options which this department or its predecessor, the Local Government Board, has presented to Tynwald since 1979.1 hope I will be excused, Your Excellency, if I say that we hope it will also be the last, at least for some considerable time. We appreciate the reasons for the various delays and changes in policy and we appreciate that in fact the previous major shifts in policy came from the Local Government Board itself. Nevertheless, the time has now come when, after nearly a decade of debate, a decision on the future strategy must be made so that my department, Government generally, local authorities and indeed the people of this Island know what direction our refuse disposal notices are to take so that we can all plan accordingly. Refuse disposal is an essential service. It is one borne out of necessity, not choice. The question, then, is not whether we have to dispose of our waste but how best we can do it. In October 1985 Tynwald directed the then Local Government Board to reconsider all the various options for refuse disposal and report back to this hon. Court with recommendations. This we have done. I must apologise to members for the length of our report and for the slight delay in bringing it before Tynwald. As hon. members will appreciate, however, it is a difficult and complex problem which as members of the department it has obviously taken us some time for us to familiarise ourselves with the issues involved. In our task we have obviously had the benefit of advice from the department’s own technical officers; we have had the benefit of various previous reports to Tynwald on this subject. We have also had the assistance of a report by a firm of independent refuse disposal consultants who were appointed by the previous Local Government Board to look at the various disposal options available. We have talked to other independent consultants and experts; we have visited landfill sites, baling plants, waste-derived fuel plants and incinerators. We have talked with manufacturers of baling plants, incinerators, W.D.F. — that is waste-disposal fuels — and composting plants, and with those interested in commercially operating these facilities. We have also talked with those on the receiving end — the authorities who have adopted and now have to operate those facilities. We have talked to those authorities who have gone through the same process and as we have, and asked them why they selected the options they have chosen. We have looked at what they do on other islands. The product of all these visits, discussions, advice and reports has been distilled and condensed into our own report now before hon. members which sets out the various options and the technical and economic features of those options. This is a technical subject and we have sought appropriate technical advice. At the end of the day, however, the best the technical advice can say is, ‘Here are the options, here are the economics, here are the pros and cons of each option’; the decision as to which option to adopt remains a policy decision and, as such, a decision for us as elected representatives to make. We appreciate that, faced with a number of competing options and the need, for example, to balance environmental impact against economic cost, the choice can be a difficult one; it has certainly proved so in the past. After all the analysing and consideration of the various arguments for and against the different disposal methods, however, we hope that members will now feel able to make their choice. In part 3 of our report we have tried to outline the various disposal options open to us, and a summary of our comments of these is included at Appendix 10. We Refuse Incineration — Report of the Department of Local Government and the Environment — Debate Commenced TYNWALD COURT, TUESDAY, 23rd FEBRUARY, 1988 T855 looked at them with four main criteria in mind. These have been environmental acceptability, economic operation, reliability of performance and resource recovery. Members will see that we have looked at recycling, at energy recovery from waste. We have examined waste-derived fuels, oil from refuse and methane production from waste. We have looked at composting, dumping at sea, reclamation of land from the sea, shredding, pulverisation and even transport of refuse off the Island. After receiving all these possible disposal options, however, we feel essentially that the choice lies between three alternatives. They are, Your Excellency, untreated landfill, landfill of baled refuse or incineration. We deal with untreated or, as it is more commonly called, crude landfill in part 5 of our report. We make it perfectly clear, I hope, to members — and I would emphasise it again — that crude landfill would be the cheapest method of refuse disposal by a considerable margin. In our view, however, and in the view, I think, of the majority of members of this Court the environmental problems associated with crude landfill and the public opposition it arouses makes it an unacceptable option to anyone. If anyone is of any doubt on this point, however, I will be very happy to take them out to The Raggatt, where they can see at first hand the sort of problems that crude landfill gives. Of course members have circulated to them a paper by Mr. Alan Dando which takes a different view and which says that crude landfill at the Ayres is really the answer to all of our problems. Hon. members, during our look at the subject we have talked to a lot of enthusiasts for incineration and a lot for baling. We have met enthusiasts for waste-derived fuel and for composting, but Mr. Dando was the first and only enthusiast we have come across for crude landfill. Being a minority of one, of course, does not necessarily mean he is wrong so I will say a little about his proposals. I do not propose to deal in detail with his comments about baling or incineration because the points he makes are either accepted or refuted by our report. I will, however, say a little about his proposal for the Ayres. At first glance his proposal may seem to be sensible and even attractive. There are just a few little problems, however, that should be cleared up. Firstly, we do not own the vast majority of land on the site; what is more, we do not even have a short-term contract for the part of the site we are presently using. Island Aggregates could order us off the site tomorrow; we are trying to rectify that at this moment. In the past Island Aggregates have been reluctant to commit themselves to even a long or short-term agreement for the use of the site, let alone to let us buy it if we could. Secondly, that part of the site which the Government does own is designated as an area of high landscape value and scenic and coastal significance in Government’s own Development Plan and as a nature conservation area in Government’s own reports on ecological survey. Mr. Dando says that there would be no problem obtaining planning permission for this site. There are some members of this Court who may remember the huge public outcry and the opposition when this area was put forward as a potential golf course.