Government puts in planning application to keep 'illegal' hazardous waste mounds
Emma Volney reports...
Jersey's government has put in an application to keep two hazardous building waste mounds it built at La Collette without proper planning permission.
For years, ministers have lacked a formal long-term strategy for disposing of the island's hazardous waste - including asbestos, contaminated soil and other demolition materials - leading to it being disposed of on the headland next to the incinerator in St Helier.
Some politicians have said the mounds are "illegal" as they were built up without the relevant permission being sought first.
In the last decade, around 250,000 tonnes of hazardous waste have been disposed of at La Collette, as the government currently does not have the required permits to ship the waste off-island.
The planning application seeks retrospective permission to build "waste management cells" on the land, effectively sealed containers holding hazardous and inert waste until the government decides what to do with it.
The cells were built back in 1995, initially to store ash from the neighbouring incinerator.
A report from the Infrastructure Department admits the hazardous waste storage facility at La Collette was "filling faster than predicted" as early as 2002.
But two decades later, the problem is yet to be solved.
The island's Infrastructure Minister, Deputy Tom Binet, is asking politicians to back a longer-term plan for the island's waste disposal strategy and says there is no other option but to keep dumping hazardous waste at La Collette.
Deputy Binet says there is yet to be a viable alternative to storing the waste at La Collette.
Deputy Binet told ITV News: "I don't think there's any great alternative. I don't think it's likely at any point in time. I don't see people queueing up to have hazardous waste in their back garden. If it goes inland, there's a great danger it could pollute waterways.
"I'd invite anyone who has a better idea of how to handle it to come along and offer me an alternative because that's yet to happen. Lots of people have criticised it but nobody has come up with a viable alternative and I think we are handling it in the best way possible."
Environmental campaigners, however, argue that the current waste mounds at La Collette are deeply damaging to the island.
John Baker, of Earth Project Jersey, said: "This must not be allowed to continue. The dumping of toxic waste in this uncontrolled manner is leaving problems for future generations."
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