The Story of the Greengairs campaign, 25 May 2010   Return to main Greengairs page

The communities of Greengairs, Plains, Glenmavis and North Airdrie in North Lanarkshire, all located around the perimeter of the Drumshanie Site near Greengairs, got together and produced a vision for the future of our area that we hoped would improve our environment when the opencast operations finally came to an end after 30+years. It's not that opencast is the only bad neighbour development that we have lived with, we also have 5 landfill sites 4 of which have recently been completed along with the largest landfill site in Europe which will continue to function for at least another 30 years. The communities who have suffered years of noise, dust, odour, pollution, mud on roads, serious infestations of flies, loss of sleep due to flouting of working hours, lack of enforcement etc were always told that the land would be returned to its original natural habitat when these activities were concluded. Every landfill and opencast application that was approved came with a restoration agreement that we were told would ensure this promise. 

Instead we still have the biggest wheelie bin in Europe on our doorstep, four other smaller wheelie bins none of which will ever go away but could be dug up again in the future to recover non-renewable materials, an application for a 350,000 tpa Incinerator recently approved on the other side of the road from the operational landfill and a major Data Farm to the south. A Data Farm is a group of buildings housing computers storing data for large organisations like banks, government etc with minimum staff required for security and maintenance only. The Incinerator and Data Centre developer is the opencast operator who had an agreed restoration plan in place which complied with the promise to return the land to natural habitat when the extraction of coal was completed. 

We could see the writing on the wall a few years ago and got together to produce a vision that met all the relevant criteria for submission to the Glasgow and Clyde Valley Structure Plan. Despite the fact that there was no guide to follow and we had no access to relevant expertise, our submission was successful in having the area designated as a Rural Investment Area. When it came to the Local Development Plan Consultation we elaborated on the detail of our submission which included waste recovery, re-use, composting etc, all higher up the waste management hierarchy than incineration and all agreed in consultation between the landfill operator and local communities. We supported 9 wind turbines for renewable energy, a community garden, an education centre, small cottage industry/start-up business units, public walkways, cycle paths, a local produce shop, a restaurant and even a trout farm. Our waste management proposals were supported by the submission made to the Local Plan by the Landfill Operator. The final draft of the Local Development Plan still shows the area in question designated as a Rural Investment Area despite the fact that our submission and the description of this land designation has been completely undermined by the Local Authority approval of the incinerator. 

We did everything "by the book", followed all the appropriate procedures and yet we are going to be worse off than if we had never engaged with the Development Plan process, while the incinerator developer completely circumvented the process and the planning system supported approval of the application. We were refused a Public Local Inquiry and some of our questions remain unanswered. All of this despite the Government rhetoric that the system will be "plan-led" and that the public should engage early with the development plan process to influence our local area. Our input wasn't acknowledged or even mentioned in the decision making process. Despite having done everything that was asked of us and more - the public still have no voice in shaping their own environment.

We will have the incinerator along with the other waste management proposals that we supported, which collectively will result in our back yard being home to about 1 million tonnes of waste per year along with increased pollution, more traffic - and all the other impacts that are no more likely to be effectively controlled than the years of opencast and landfill that we have already suffered. Whatever happened to the principles of social and environmental justice - as one planning lawyer put it - they have disappeared "like snow off a dyke in summer" since the SNP Government came into power. 

Our Local Authority did not have to make difficult decisions on waste management - we had already provided them with the answer which would process a greater capacity than the incinerator. We cannot have our community garden or trout farm as they would be too close to the incinerator to ensure that the produce would be safe for human consumption. We are unlikely to have any positive investment in the area in business or public access proposals due to the incinerator. And we are still asking questions about how this could happen and getting contradictory answers from different government organisations and departments. 

Based on our experience we do not live in a socially just democracy, rather we have an oligarchic democracy with a clear bias towards development any where any time. We are not surprised by the Invergordon decision and have grave concerns that other incinerators which have been refused at local level will eventually be approved by the Scottish Government.

Ann Coleman
on behalf of the North Airdrie Joint Communities Group