'No alternative' to incinerator, council says

Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility will take waste from seven councils

There is "no viable alternative" to sending huge amounts of a city's waste to a massive incinerator, a council has said.

Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TVERF), in Redcar, which is due to be operational in 2029, will take up to 450,000 tonnes of waste every year from seven councils, including Newcastle.

Concerns had been raised over health and environmental impacts of the facility and there had been calls to abandon the project.

But Christine Herriot, Newcastle City Council’s director of operations and regulatory services, told a scrutiny panel that there was no "affordable alternative".

The contract, to build and run the £300m incinerator, is expected to run for 29 years - with the option to extend for a further 11, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

A group of health workers staged a protest outside Newcastle Civic Centre in September calling for the council to pull out of the deal.

Last year a report by the council’s climate change committee warned that TVERF could become a "distraction from increasing recycling", and the city could miss out on more environmentally-friendly ways of disposing of waste.

'Well thought out'

At a meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee last week, Liberal Democrat councillor, Wendy Taylor, said the council could miss out on better ways to deal with waste because of the long contract.

However, Ms Herriot said: "While you might have views about the TVERF, there is not an alternative really that would be affordable and provide us with the sustainable outcomes that the council wants in terms of net zero."

She added that it had been "a well thought out decision" and that alternatives had been considered.

The committee was also told that the lengthy contract for the incinerator was needed to give its operator "certainty" over the supply of materials and that a shorter deal would not be affordable.

In 2000, the city council was prosecuted when ash from the old Byker incinerator was found to contain potentially cancer-causing dioxins.

Local authority bosses have insisted that the Redcar site will operate strict pollution controls and its operation will mean more than 90% of Newcastle’s waste would not be sent to landfill.