We Want to Breathe Clean Air, Mr Pickles
The Breathe Clean Air Group is sending out a message to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, “the residents of Urmston and Stretford want to breathe clean air, Mr Pickles.”
This follows the announcement that the Secretary of Sate will have the final say on the future of the controversial Barton Renewable Energy Plant in Davyhulme, Greater Manchester.
Not only does the north part of Trafford have the busy M60 motorway running through it, it also has Trafford Park, the Trafford Centre and conference centre, five gas engines at the UU Waste Water Treatment Facility and a paper mill in Carrington. Soon to come are a huge gas-fired power station in Carrington, a hotel at junction 9, a supermarket and office block at junction 10, a methane plant at Barton M60 bridge and a housing development at Barton Swing Bridge. Nearby is the new Salford Reds rugby stadium and next to it is the proposed Port Salford.
Some of these developments give off industrial emissions, but they all generate diesel and petrol fumes from the traffic they attract. The World Health Organisation has recently confirmed that diesel exhaust fumes cause cancer. Nitrogen oxides are already nearly twice the limit and 1,3 butadiene is nearly 40 times the limit.
In the middle of this, Peel Energy wants to build an incinerator which will use diesel fuel and have diesel trucks delivering biomass and other waste and removing hazardous bottom ash. They will have difficulty keeping nitrogen oxides to below target levels and the low chimney stack won’t be able to disperse the pollution adequately. Other emissions such as fine particulates, dioxins and heavy metals will add to the pollution and have health implications.
Chairman of the Breathe Clean Air Group Pete Kilvert said, “airborne pollution from the incinerator and the traffic it attracts is the final nail in the coffin for our already highly polluted area. We want Mr Pickles to appreciate that we can’t take any more of it”.