Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Fly-tip fears for Exmoor as waste sites face chop
FEARS have been voiced that Exmoor, one of the South West’s most attractive locations, may be blighted by fly-tipping if Somerset Council pushes forward with plans to close recycling centres.
At a packed meeting at Dulverton
Town Hall, residents discussed plans to close the recycling centre in the town, which is currently open two days a week.
It’s part of the proposal to close five recycling centres in Somerset because of council cuts. Sites in Castle Cary, Cheddar, Crewkerne, Dulverton and Williton are all at risk of closure after Somerset Council declared a financial emergency.
Somerset would be left with 11 household waste recycling sites instead of the current 16.
Somerset Council says the potential closures would save almost £1m over the next two years, but “no final decision has been made”.
It is one of the proposals unveiled by Somerset Council to stop the local authority from going effectively bankrupt.
At the meeting, several residents spoke. Roger Thompson, who lives in Dulverton, said: “The obvious effect is fly-tipping. What effect will that have on our environment as a tourist destination? The whole area relies on tourism enormously, all the small businesses, everything like that. Every person who comes down here now puts their experience on social media as soon as they go back.
“If we start getting a reputation as a filthy fly-tipping dump, people will go somewhere else for their holidays, and that’ll harm the whole of our economy.”
Mrs Garner from Bridgetown said: “When it’s closed, rubbish is often left at the gate. I would assume that if it’s closed finally, there will be a lot of fly-tipping.
“We live in a beautiful part of the country that we should cherish, and I, for one, would like to keep it that way with the proper facilities to help dispose of recycling and rubbish.”
Claire Savill from Brushford added: “It’s not just farmers’ gateways; it’s people collecting rubbish, putting it in old caravans, and dumping it on the moor. How much does it cost to get rid of that?”
Bridgwater & West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has opposed the closures, stressing the counterintuitive nature of such a move in an era where environmental consciousness and reduced car usage are paramount.
In a statement read at the meeting, he said: “We will almost certainly see an increase in fly-tipping. We already have a million fly-tipping incidents annually in this country, with a clean-up cost of more than £390 million.”
Somerset Council’s lead member for environment and climate change, Councillor Dixie Darch, said: “I don’t want to close any recycling site. I’m proud of our recycling rates and how our residents have risen to that challenge to make our recycling rate so high.”
She said that Somerset, with 16 recycling centres, was top regarding the ratio of households to centres, excluding the Scilly Isles.
She continued: “Even if we were to take five out, we would still be above average. We are a rural county, and we know that rural services are much more difficult and expensive to deliver. I completely get the disadvantages that rural communities face.”
Kirsty Larkins, the service director for climate, environment and sustainability, said that the council had budgeted an extra £200,000 to deal with fly-tipping in the event of any recycling centre closure.
She said: “Exmoor is a fantastic place. Where we had closed recycling sites before, we saw some localised increase in fly-tipping around the sites, but that wasn’t across the area. We have built into the proposal the cost to deal with that increase and support fly-tipping enforcement.”