Waste-to-Energy Incinerator License Revoked in Scotland

Waste-to-Ener­gy Incin­er­a­tor License Revoked in Scot­land 

- August 27, 2013. Source: BBC News

The £20m plant was the site of a major blaze last month tack­led by more than 30 firefighters.

Sepa is also seek­ing action to avoid pol­lu­tion and return the site to a “sat­is­fac­to­ry state”.

The agency cit­ed four rea­sons for the revo­ca­tion notice:

• Per­sis­tent non-com­pli­ance with the require­ments of its permit
• Fail­ure to com­ply with an enforce­ment notice
• Fail­ure to main­tain finan­cial pro­vi­sion and resources to com­ply with the require­ments of the permit
• Fail­ure to recov­er ener­gy with a high lev­el of efficiency.

Scot­gen is enti­tled to appeal to the Scot­tish Min­is­ters against the notice.

If there is an appeal, the revo­ca­tion notice would be set aside until the appeal had been determined.

This would mean that the plant could car­ry on oper­at­ing until Scot­tish min­is­ters make a decision.

‘Con­sis­tent­ly failed’

Ian Con­roy, Sep­a­’s tech­ni­cal sup­port man­ag­er in the south west, said: “Sepa recog­nis­es the impor­tance of plants like this as part of the over­all mix of facil­i­ties and ser­vices that will have a role in deliv­er­ing a Zero Waste Scotland.”

He said that since the Dum­fries plant had opened the agency had pro­vid­ed sup­port and assis­tance to help meet its requirements.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly despite this, they have not done so,” he said.

“The facil­i­ty start­ed oper­a­tions more than four years ago, and in that time has nev­er achieved a lev­el of com­pli­ance which would give Sepa any degree of con­fi­dence that future oper­a­tion would be any different.

“The facil­i­ty has con­sis­tent­ly failed to meet any rea­son­able expec­ta­tion of envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance and the pre­dict­ed lev­el of ener­gy recov­ery at approx­i­mate­ly 3% is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing and unsatisfactory.”

He said Sepa had tak­en this “seri­ous and unusu­al action of revok­ing the per­mit” after “care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and assess­ment of the reg­u­la­to­ry options available”.

A spokesman for Scot­gen said it was cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing its options with its advisers.