This has been a bad week for the world's incinerator salesmen and their local government backers.On Monday, China's middle class "lodged its first mass challenge against the government by staging an environmental protest" -- against an incinerator.
Yesterday, an alliance of state legislators and environmental groups in Minnesota foiled plans by the county and its incineration contractor to sneak through a 21% expansion of a local garbage incinerator as an "administrative amendment" to their permit. That contractor asking for the expansion is Covanta, the same company that operates Metro's Burnaby incinerator.
The MN Pollution Control Agency also cautioned Covanta they had better comply with the existing permit. Last week Covanta was fined by the state of New Jersey for violating air pollution control standards.
And yesterday in Scotland, "a number of senior politicians, experts and members of the public yesterday spent almost six hours berating Perth and Kinross Council planning officers over the 'catastrophic' decision to grant outline planning consent for a £100 million incinerator close to Perth town centre." (Courier, 25 November). As a result of their efforts, the incinerator plan is now considered "dead in the water."
Metro engineer Ken Carrusca and Surrey Councillor Marvin Hunt were scheduled to be speakers at a major conference on incineration held this week in Toronto, but their names suddenly disappeared from the agenda. They were supposed to talk about "mitigating negative public perception" of garbage incinerators.
Pic: Guardian, November 23, 2009
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