Kingston residents are being asked to have their say on the future of waste management in the borough - while council discussions over the possibility of building a £900m recycling plant at Villiers Road continue.
A four-borough public consultation on possible sites for new waste management facilities began on July 20, with two locations in Chessington and one in Tolworth described as having "potential" by Kingston Council.
Aside from the 12-week consultation, meetings are also being held with 10 firms hoping to grab the rights to build new waste plants in in the four boroughs, with interested parties already having had tours of Villiers Road and two other sites in Croydon and Sutton.
The combination of plants would need to deal with up to 220,000 tonnes of rubbish a year from the four boroughs, possibly including industrial sludge, clinical and radioactive waste.
Kingston Council has been quick to stress that no "old-style, mass burn incinerator" would be built on the site. Its options include a rubbish burning Energy from Waste (EfW) plant and a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant - which both burn waste products to create energy.
Although the councils are required to remain technology neutral when considering the form of the future waste plant, the group’s PFI funding application used examples of two 106,500 tonne-a-year capacity mechanical biological treatment facilities, and a similar sized EfW with combined CHP.
The four councils aim to halve the 660,000 tonnes of rubbish they send to landfill each year by constructing the new plant by 2014, in order to stay in line with new UK and European Union legislation on burying waste.
A public workshop to help gauge residents’ views on potential sites is due to be held at Kingston Guildhall on September 16, while interested groups can also invite council officers to explain the plans to them before October 2.
The full consultation is online at kingston.gov.uk/wasteplan.
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