Finding new landfill site is urgent, minister says

Ministers agreed to extend the life of Wright's Pit North until 2030

There is urgency in the search for a waste disposal site to replace the current northern landfill facility, the Manx infrastructure minister has said.

Planning approval has been granted to keep using Wright's Pit North in Bride until 2030.

However Tim Crookall said it was unlikely to have the capacity to keep accepting construction waste for that duration.

Daphne Caine MHK is set to make a bid to have permission to use the site annulled at the December sitting of Tynwald.

Mr Crookall previously said if that were to happen it would present the department and the construction industry with a "huge problem".

'Negligent'

Permission for disposing of waste at the site expired at the end of 2019, but the infrastructure department's bid to extend that period was approved by the Council of Ministers last month after it was recommended in a planning inspector's independent report.

Mr Crookall told Tynwald the department was exploring "various options and alternatives" for treating or disposing of construction and demolition waste, including the potential for private sector investment.

Ms Caine said the department had been "negligent" in its inability to find an alternative site sooner, which left waste being disposed of in an "unlined gravel pit close to nature reserves and the sea".

She told politicians said the department had been operating the site "outside the law" for four years after the planning permission lapsed, and had a duty to find an "appropriate, fully engineered" alternative site.

However Mr Crookall said it was "absolutely incumbent on the department" to ensure a new facility was found before space ran out at the existing site.

"We absolutely, for the sake of the island's interests and the construction industry's interests, have to have somewhere else, and we are working on that," he said.