The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Inquiry into bid to build city centre‘monstrosity’
A PUBLIC inquiry into a controversial waste-to-energy plant near Perth city centre will take place between November 26 and December 3.
The inquiry was triggered after Perth and Kinross Council turned down Grundon Waste Management’s second bid to site an industrial-scale waste disposal facility in Shore Road. The matter is one of the most contentious planning issues ever to dog the Fair City.
After a pre-application meeting, Scottish Government reporter Dannie Onn set the dates for the inquiry and ruled it would take place over four sessions at a location yet to be determined. The sessions will cover noise impact, odour and air quality, conditions and landscape and visual impact.
In an early blow to Grundon, the reporter has declined to call up a specialist to help deal with air quality issues.
He said: “The appellant has asked the Scottish ministers to consider appointing an assessor to assist the reporter.
“This is based on the complexity of the air quality evidence, which can take time to assimilate and understand. The council does not see the need for an assessor.
“Having considered the matter further following this meeting, the reporter considers that he has considerable evidence before him.
“This appears to be well set out and clearly explained. Whilst there are complexities, the opportunity to examine this evidence in further procedures should provide him with sufficient understanding to determine the planning appeal.”
The proposed Shore Road complex – once memorably dubbed a “smoke-belching monstrosity” – has been vociferously opposed by thousands of local people concerned about the perceived health risks and the effect on the city’s landscape.
Initially, Grundon wanted to place an incinerator at the site of Holden Environmental, which is part-owned by the council and for which outline permission for a recycling plant has existed since it was granted in 2006.
When that scheme was rejected, the firm returned with a gasification plant plan that was similarly dismissed by local planners in February.
As well as concerned locals, critics have included SEPA, the local council and even Perth Prison, whose governor argued inmates could riot over the constant noise and thrum of machinery.
The envisaged complex would have 100-foot chimney stacks which locals fear would disperse pollutants across Perth from the thousands of tonnes of rubbish treated within and blight the local Kinnoull Conservation Area and historic city centre.
There are also concerns about the ability of the roads network to cope with hundreds of lorries continually delivering landfill rubbish from across the country.
Perth and Kinross Council is set to fight the appeal on the behalf of the near-3000 objectors to the scheme.
Its statement of case states the “scale and nature of the proposed operation, together with attendant buildings (including stacks) in this part of Shore Road would be harmful” due to “visual prominence” and “noise and odour and air quality”.
The Scottish Prison Service has warned it could face unrest among its 630 inmates at Perth Prison, which would be just 40 metres from the operation.
Bridgend, Gannochy and Kinnoull Community Council has also objected, stating: “The proposed development is not compatible with its surroundings and is creating an unacceptable environmental impact in terms of visual effects, air quality/ human health, noise and vibration, transport and ecological effects.”
Grundon says the setting for the plant is already mainly industrial and would have no real effect on the landscape. It also denies there are any health threats from the gasification process and maintains criticisms of its initial proposal have been answered.