I WILL come clean and state that I have never much liked the idea of the Javelin Park incinerator proposal, not least because, if it goes ahead, we are stuck with it for the next 25 years – during which time we surely should be finding more elegant and efficient ways of dealing with our waste than using fossil fuels to burn it (for example, packaging legislation to prevent much of it being created in the first place).

I also find it hard to trust the bland assurances given by a county council that seems to have backed itself too far into a corner to even consider it might be making a mistake and does not seem to regard itself as bound by the law, in that it has so far refused to comply with a Freedom of Information requirement to reveal its contract figures (how ironic that they now appear to have leaked into the public domain anyway).

On the other hand, there are counter-proposals such as the R4C community recycling scheme.

While my heart says that’s a much better direction to go, I do not yet feel in a position to judge its practical deliverability.

So where do would I go from here?

I think it would be in the interests of both local democracy and sensible waste management to set up some kind of independently-managed inquiry process to examine both options – and any other potential solutions, such as simply sending waste out of the county to nearby incinerators with spare capacity.

The county council will say it has already done this kind of investigation, which it has, but not in a way that was as transparent as many of its taxpayers would like.

And we all know that the outcome of any options assessment process is pretty much determined by the kind of assumptions built into it from the beginning.

It is these, as much as the later stages of analysis and costing, that need to be agreed by a cross-section of interested parties if the result is going to command widespread support.

Of course, such a process would cost money, but nowhere near as much as the price of a bad long-term decision.

And then there is that small matter of our planetary wellbeing that we might want to consider while we are at it.

Does anyone else think this would be a good way forward?

Nigel Westaway

Stroud