CAMPAIGNING group 38 Degrees Stroud have called for a last minute meeting with the firm building the Javelin Park incinerator to discuss a radical rethink.
The letter, written by Jojo Metha and Lizzie Fletcher, calls on the firm to pause before construction work gets underway and seriously reconsider it plans for the half-a-billion pound facility near Stroud.
It is addressed to Javier Peiro, managing director at Urbaser Ltd, the Spanish company which won a contract to build the huge energy-from-waste plant in Haresfield.
The letter says: “Now is the ideal time for Urbaser Balfour Beatty (UBB) to reconsider what they are offering the county, before construction begins and the county council, the taxpayer and indeed you and your investors are landed with a huge white elephant in the very near future,” it says.
“38 Degrees Stroud are therefore by means of this letter requesting a public meeting with UBB to discuss alternative options.
“If you are to take your own environment policy and your corporate social responsibility seriously, we trust you will welcome this pressure to revisit the Javelin Park situation.
“The public do not yet have sight of the full contract you have made with the county council.
“However we are certain that some careful re-thinking at this stage will be preferable to - and in the long term more economical as well as more environmentally friendly than - continuing down the present path, which continues to be drastically unpopular among both residents and local elected representatives and can only become more so as the above scenario unfolds.”
Initial work to clear the derelict site started in June – with construction due to follow later in the year.
UBB say the facility will generate enough electricity to power around 26,000 homes and employ around 40 people.
The facility, which will dispose of the household waste of Gloucestershire’s 600,000 residents, will take a further three years to build.
But campaigners, who have opposed the incinerator from the word go, are defiant the project can still be stopped in its tracks.
A “come clean” petition calling for the full details for the incinerator contract between UBB and GCC to be revealed has gathered 4,800 signatures.
Jojo Mehta told the SNJ: “It's quite simple. All local folk want is a solution that doesn't cost the earth, and I mean that in both senses of course.
“And UBB are perfectly capable of providing that if they - and the County Council - can stop pointing at each other and saying 'we can't change our minds, they won't let us' and start putting their heads together as to how to solve this.
“No matter what may be hidden in that contract, the prospect is not looking good five years from now.
“It's time to start applying some intelligence and common sense to the situation before more good money is thrown after bad."
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