Working for you - Elaine Smith MSP supports local campaigners against plans for a pyrolysis plant in Monklands, 18 January 2012

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Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser, January 18, 2012

THIS week will see another chapter in this town's fight against the proposed pyrolysis incinerator at Carnbroe. 

North Lanarkshire Council have appealed against a decision by the Scottish Ministers to allow planning permission for the plant to go ahead. 

I appeared in person at the Public Inquiry Session last February to give evidence against the granting of planning permission. 

I told the reporters that there is no need for a waste management facility of this type and scale to be located in Coatbridge, particularly within such close proximity to housing. 

I made the point at the inquiry that our local area is already burdened with significant waste management facilities and that I saw no reason why we should be turned into the dumping ground of Scotland. 

North Lanarkshire Council recognised that the potential incinerator was the wrong proposal, in the wrong location and that is why our democratically elected councillors decided not to grant permission for the plant. 

The local authority believed that it hadn't been adequately demonstrated that the proposed waste management facility would not be detrimental to human health, particularly of children and adults living near to the site. 

I do not believe that any level of risk to the health of people living in my constituency should be tolerated. 

I asked the First Minister in Parliament if his government would use its powers under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act to refuse planning permission for this plant, however they chose not to do so. 

Local residents have been fantastic in keeping the pressure on the Scottish Government. 

The march at Shawhead organised by MRAPP was extremely well attended and sent a clear message to Shore Energy and the Scottish Government that this plant is not wanted in Coatbridge. 

It is my own personal view that waste management is too important to leave to the private sector, whose prime motive is profit, not safety or the environment. 

International expert on incineration, Dr Paul Connett, gave evidence to the public petitions committee in the Scottish Parliament, in which he stated that study after study has shown that a combination of recycling, composting and source separation is far cheaper than incineration. I have no doubt that continuing to incinerate waste will have a detrimental impact on our efforts to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover. 

It is incredibly disappointing, therefore, that North Lanarkshire Council have been forced into making this expensive appeal against the Scottish Ministers within the courts, when the Scottish Government could have acted on the side of the people and refused the application outright. 

It appears to me that our planning system is stacked in favour of big business, which have the resources to pay for top legal advice, and is against ordinary people who are trying to defend their communities. 

This needs to change.

Elaine Smith MSP