Moray Friends of the Earth

 Campaigning for Environmental Justice

It’s been nearly a year now that Moray FOE has been chasing this illusive beast; The Incinerator.  But the powers that oversee our lives, of which there are many and various kinds, have learnt that to prevent the troublesome interference of the public the goal posts not only need moving but entirely hiding from view.

An incinerator is no longer an incinerator, it’s now called a ‘heat from waste’ facility/plant or some such. There are two, no three reasons for this; one, the word ‘incinerator’ comes with two many bad associations and has any way been defeated in the past. Two, the word heat is not as severe as incinerate and sounds more like your home boiler than a large industrial plant spewing smoke. And most significantly, three, the use of the word waste means that the looming beast of an incinerator can be slipped behind a screen of camouflaged netting and emerge as a ‘green’ technology, pretending to be good for the environment, good for recycling, good for your pocket. Good for nothing, unless that is you want a fallout of dioxins and particulates raining down on the people of Moray and the northeast with their insidious effects.

Burning recourses in any form, under any name, when they could be more usefully recycled is a waste, finding out how the council, the executive, or the government intend to do this, is proving to be a cat’s cradle of red tape paper trails. For example to build an incinerator, planning would be needed from the council, the need for an incinerator would be decided by the executive, call it a heat from waste plant and it becomes ‘energy’ production not waste disposal, and its down to Westminster. Here decisions are based on ‘national’ need and the use of ‘renewable’ energy. The executive cherry pick these decisions and fumble a few consultation documents, then leave it to the council who cannot reveal planning applications because of business confidentiality. The three tiers of governance are all using their own language to deny knowledge of the subject while at the same time saying the decision is someone else’s of which they have no knowledge but must, nonetheless, abide by.

This Gordian knot of denial seems to have a loose thread though, from previous campaigns by pressure groups it’s an established rule that the people must be consulted, public consultation, we were asked many things but not about incineration or any of its derivatives, so there may still be a string we can pull to trip the beast.

February 2007

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Website updated 05 February 2009