A LEADING environmental expert has joined the growing chorus of voices opposed to the Javelin Park incinerator, saying that if he was a councillor tasked with deciding the planning application he would vote against it.

Former director of Friends of the Earth Jonathon Porritt, a distinguished writer and commentator on sustainable development issues, said if Conservative county councillors voted to approve the £500 million facility ‘they would not be making a decision based on the evidence available to them today’.

Mr Porritt, who was speaking at a public meeting in Cheltenham on Friday, January 11, said Gloucestershire County Council would be making a grave error if it locked itself into a 25-year contract to burn its rubbish because newer, cheaper and greener technologies already existed for disposing of waste.

"If you were sitting on that planning committee you would be hard pressed to say that this decision is in the best interests of Gloucestershire," he said.

A co-founder of Forum for the Future – a not-for-profit organisation which advises businesses and governments about environmental policy – Mr Porritt said he was not automatically opposed to the idea of incineration, however.

In fact, before declaring his opposition to the plant, and to the alarm of some anti-incineration campaigners at the meeting who thought he might come out in favour of it, he said there was no ‘ cut and dry case against incineration’ and it was not ‘inherently immoral or wicked’.

But he went on to say that in the context of Gloucestershire, and the specific proposal for Javelin Park near Haresfield, a compelling case could not be made for building a mass burn incinerator.

Mr Porritt said the size and scale of the plant, which will burn 190,000 tonnes of waste a year, was disproportionate and he said it could potentially harm recycling efforts.

He also questioned whether it was the best deal for the county’s taxpayers, saying: "Incinerators might be financially viable from an investment perspective but that does not necessarily make it financially viable from the perspective of a council taxpayer or society at large."

John Beattie from Safety in Waste and Rubbish Disposal (SWARD) and a number of other anti-incineration campaigners from GlosVAIN also spoke at the meeting, including the group’s chairman Sue Oppenheimer, who expressed disbelief that a £500 million investment in an incinerator would only create 40 jobs.

Both GCC and Urbaser Balfour Beatty – the company proposing to build the facility – were invited to the meeting but declined to send representatives.

Speaking on the night, former Stroud MP David Drew received a deafening round of applause when he said the incinerator would be ‘the single biggest disaster ever visited on Gloucestershire’ if built.

The Lib Dem Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood, who was also in attendance, said he was ‘completely opposed’ to the burner, saying ‘environmentally this is just a crazy and unsustainable approach’.

With county council elections coming up in May, he urged members of the public to ask candidates their stance on the incinerator project. "Do not let them off the hook," he said.